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CALVIN COOLIDGE 



Farmer — Mayor — Governor — President 



HIS LIFE — ITS LESSON 



THE CORNERSTOXE 

"Allured to brigiiter worlds, and led the way." 

— Goldsmith. 




THE MOTHER OF THE PRESIDENT 



"About his cradle all was poor and mean save only the 
source of all great men, the love of a wonderful woman. When 
she faded away in his tender years, from her death bed in humble 
poverty she dowered her son with greatness. There can be no 
proper observance of a birthday which forgets the mother." 

— Lincoln Day Proclamation — I'Jl'J — C. C. 



CALVIN COOLIDGE 

His First Biography 



From Cornerstone to Capstone 
To the Accession 



By R. M. WASHBURN 

Author of "Smith's Barn" 




BOSTON 
SMALL, MAYNARD AND COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 



\i<y+5uj 1^ 



I f I K. 

.V/31 



COPTBIGHT, 1923 

ROBERT M. WASHBURN 
Boston 

All lights reserved 



Printed in the United States of America 



THE MURRAY PKINTIKC COMPANT 
CAMBRIDGE, MASS. 

BOUND Br THE BOSTON B00KBIMDI;4C COMPANT 
CAMBRIDGE, MASS. 



C1A759434 

OCT 17 1923 



0-^ 






WITH AFFECTION 

TO 

CHARLES SUMNER BIRD 

The First Political Layman in Massachusetts 



The Secret 



Silence — Uncommon Sense — Wit — Mystery 



Fidelity — Preparation — Two Allies — Fate 



Omnia Procter Strepitum et Clamorem^ 



Everything except noise. — Interpreted for outside of Boston. 



FATE 

It was only a plain New England farm among 
the folks of the hills of Vermont. There was 
neither train nor telephone nor trolley. It was much 
as God had made it. There lay a child, young and 
weak and helpless, and a mother proud in the gift 
of prophecy. And there stood by the child's cradle 
one great and powerful, Fate. She had sought him 
out in his simple atmosphere. Her protecting arm 
she raised above him. She took him by the hand 
and ever led him on. She saw in him virtue to be 
recognized. Capacity was quick to see and to seize 
opportunity. She commissioned into the service a 
good and a great merchant of Boston. She cried 
gangway to a creditable public servant, who stood 
high and third on Beacon Hill, who blocked his 
progress, who was then drafted into the grand army 
of the politically dead. She commanded striking 
policemen to open a path before him. A great Police 
Commissioner gave wings to his feet. She led him 
towards horizons as boundless as the seas, fame, 
power and financial freedom. She set him in the 
seats of the mighty. Even Death rode on before him 
and cleared the way. 



IN EXPIATION? 

I HAVE known him for sixteen years, since we were 
in the House in Massachusetts in 1908. In 1913, 
when he was Senate-Chairman of the Committee on 
Railroads, I was House-Chairman. For five years 
we were legislative colleagues. 

His First Biography is an attempt to write of a 
personal friend as he is. He has a marked indi- 
viduality which appeals and stimulates an honest, 
human story; history and romance, fact and fancy. 
It seeks to cover the whole keyboard, setting out 
cheerfully into the happy notes of the treble and 
venturing at times among the gloomier notes of the 
bass. It ventures to touch upon his particular indi- 
vidualities, not only for the truth but also to lighten 
the portrait with amusement, it is thought innocent. 
It thus cinches its sincerity, sets off its praise. It 
analyzes honestly his success and its causes. It also 
attempts to respect the proprieties of the Presidency. 

It drives at quality not quantity, symbolized by 
the man and by his characteristic caution to the 
Massachusetts Senate: 

"Be Brief." 

R. M. W. 

236 Bay State Road, 

Boston. 
September 15, 1923. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER 



FACE 



I. Calvin the Silent 3 

11. Among the Hills ..... 7 

III. Amherst '95 20 

IV. Bar, Ballots and Babes .... 35 
V. His Unofficial Life 47 

VI. Up Beacon Hill 48 

VII. The Two Allies ..... 73 

VIII. A Profile 96 

IX. Along the Potomac 101 

X. Some High Tides 120 

XL The Lesson 148 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

The Mother of the President . . Frontispiece 



FACING 
FACE 



Birthplace. The Cilley Store .... 6 

Cow and Cal 16 

Vacations on the Farm 20 

"The Executive Mansion." Northampton . 34 

Coolidge and His First Biographer ... 48 

The Mock Session 50 

The Governor. The Police Commissioner . 72 

For Better for Worse 96 

The Three Coolidge Men. Washington . . 100 

The Place of the Accession 114 

His Political Ladder 148 



CALVIN COOLIDGE 



CALVIN COOLIDGE 

CHAPTER I 
Calvin the Silent 

*7 have never been hurt by what I 
have not said." — C. C. 

On the fourth day of July, 1872, more than 
fifty-one years ago, in the columns of a news 
sheet. The Blueberry, which succeeded occasion- 
ally in making its appearance in the town of 
Plymouth, Vermont, appeared the laconic entry: 
"Born, to Victoria Josephine Moor and John 
Calvin Coolidge, a man-child, John Calvin 
Coolidge, Junior." These tidings of great joy 
did not cause banks to close or business to be 
tied up, for that was a country of farmers only, 
and those who read it were tillers of the soil 
and not seers. However, the little stranger, with 
a foresight sound and characteristic, had chosen 
as the day of his advent one which the neighbors 
were bound to celebrate. 

The child, an auburn-haired, smooth-faced 

3 



4 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

babe with a proboscis somewhat attenuated, was 
as unique as he lay in his cradle as he was to 
be as a man. He seemed troubled. The atmos- 
phere of ambition enshrouded him. He seemed 
restless and anxious for change and for prog- 
ress. The baubles which divert and stimulate 
the prosaic young seemingly had no charm for 
him, nor did anything which tender hearts or 
wise heads could plan. He lay in his new bed 
and cried and when he had tired of crying, he 
wept and then he cried again. All this appar- 
ently with deliberation and for a purpose and 
as a means to an end. 

For the first effort of the child and 

the man has been always^ not to play 

but to think. 

A mother solicitous through unselfish love 
sat by his side, intent upon bringing him peace; 
and a father with the more selfish purpose of 
sleep. The family physician bent over the crib 
with that rural versatility which had familiar- 
ized him with the whole gamut of bodily afflic- 
tions, from rheumatics to melancholia. Noted 
psychologists too were added to the throng, not 
alone for the advancement of medical science 



CALVIN THE SILENT 5 

but with the hope of solving a problem which 
seemed to baffle all. 

These all followed his infant gaze as it swept 
the plain walls of that Vermont farmhouse. 
They watched his eyes as they rested and became 
riveted upon the only decoration in that room, a 
portrait of that Great Liberator of the Dutch, of 
the low lands of Holland, a Prince and a Count 
of Nassau, William the Silent. And they gave it 

to the child. 

Then peace came to that household and to its 
mother. The father slept. The general practi- 
tioner went his way and the noted specialists 
returned to the great centers. And the child 
studied the face and the features of the portrait 
and then, placing the end of one of his small 
fore-fingers upon the mouth of that great prince 
and the other upon one of his ears, he too was 
content and happy and he too slept, and peace 
overwhelmed that small house and that small 

family. 

And those who sat about the child construed 
the lessons of what they had seen to be: first, 
that he would leave the hill country of his birth 
and also live close to his adopted meadow lands 
along the banks of the Connecticut; and second. 



6 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

that he fastened the hopes of the political suc- 
cess that was to be his upon the determination, 
not to talk but to listen, not upon the power of 
speech but upon the possibilities of silence. 
From that hour he then became and has since 
continued, 

Calvin the Silent.* 



Title originated in His First Biography, First Edition, 1920. 



CHAPTER II 
Among the Hills 

**VermoTit is my birthright. Here, 
one gets close to nature, in the moun- 
tains, in the brooks, the waters of 
which hurry to the sea; in the lakes, 
shining like silver in their green set- 
ting; fields tilled, not by machinery 
but by the brain and hand of man. 
My folks are happy and contented. 
They belong to themselves, live within 
their income, and fear 
no many — C. C 

Calvin Coolidge is proud of Vermont and 
her nature, his folks and their simplicity. Their 
praises he often sings. Otherwise, he seldom 
praises things; or men, whether under obliga- 
tion to them or not. Independent of praise him- 
self, he cannot understand its sweet stimulus to 
others. He knows the plain people. He thus 
conserves their rights. He is one of them. It 
has been said that God loves the plain people 
most because he made so many of them. This 

7 



8 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

story of the boyhood of the President among the 
hills of Vermont is a story of a faithful and 
industrious son. This is all. This is much. He 
has always led an orderly life, of preparation 
for tomorrow, lest the grasshopper become a 
burden. There is an old adage: 

''The bee gains little from the floioer, 
A stone a day will raise a tower. 
Yet the hive is filled, the tower is 

done 
If steadily the work goes on." 

The young are impatient of counsel from 
those who have already walked the way. They 
often insist upon burning their wings around 
their own lamps. A young woman whom a 
grandmother at an afternoon tea had ventured 
to advise did not hesitate to say: "Grandmother, 
you are wrong." Her grandmother then re- 
plied as she handed the child a buttered scone: 
"Mary, if you were about to climb the Matter- 
horn and a guide should tell you that your shoes 
should be cleated, would you say to him: 'You 
are wrong.' He has climbed the Matterhom. 
So have I, for life is but a series of summits to 
be sought." What man is there who would not 



AMONG THE HILLS 9 

live his life again if he could and would cap- 
italize his experience and that of others. What 
mental agony like the realization of mistakes, 
irreparable, where the nail holes always remain. 
History gives each one of us a blank page, a 
fresh and clean page to write his history upon. 
Calvin Coolidge has lived with his ears and 
his eyes wide open for counsel. He has always 
been a student of history because he believes it 
has a lesson for today and for tomorrow. His 
mind is always open. Should he be a candidate 
for the Presidency in 1924 against the great 
motor-maker, the Phoenix of Detroit, the issue 
may well be Ford's creed: "All history is bunk." 
Boy and man, small and great, he has always 
had purpose, and determination enough to carry 
it out. He has always done not only the day's 
work but he has done it during the hours of the 
day. To him, the hours of the evening have 
been hours for forward thinking and forward 
planning. The young man is too much content 
with his comfort of today. He is too apt not to 
look beyond the dinner and the dance of tonight. 
He forgets the day when perhaps a cloud of 
storks may complicate his situation. Hence his 
lot, easy today, is a struggle tomorrow. Cool- 



10 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

idge then as now was never content simply to 
contemplate the small single stickers securely 
sheltered on the placid surface within the break- 
water, but his glass has always been trained on 
the rough outside sea, where he was to set sail. 
Even today his crest is not the words: Je suis 
arrive. Enough of philosophy. Tlieory is easy. 
Practice is hard. It is easy to write a recipe 
for the Presidency but hard to secure an elec- 
tion to the Legislature. 

This is another story of The Log Cabin 
to The White House 

It is true that our hero did not come from as 
far back as Lincoln. He has gone as far, how- 
ever, for while he may not have been bom in a 
log cabin it must not be forgotten that the civili- 
zation of his day has advanced. Relatively his 
termini have been as far apart. 

John Calvin Coolidge, the father of the Presi- 
dent, is a farmer at Plymouth, Vermont, as his 
ancestors have been before him. Plymouth, 
also known as "The Notch," is in Windsor 
County eleven miles north of Ludlow the nearest 
railroad center for the town, on the Boston and 
Maine Road. It is southeast from Rutland. 



AMONG THE HILLS 11 

The family originally settled at Watertown in 
Massachusetts in 1630. John Calvin Coolidge, 
Senior, has earned the respect of the community, 
for he has sat in the State Legislature, House 
and Senate. He has also been Constable, Col- 
lector, Superintendent of Schools, Deputy Sher- 
iff, Notary Public, Selectman and State Asses- 
sor. He has also served on the staff of former 
Governor W. W. Stickney. The quantity of 
these public trusts, which he has been unable to 
resist, no one holds public office willingly, may 
well be set off against the quality of the Presi- 
dency and have led the boy Cal to look upon the 
latter as a reasonable aspiration for a Coolidge. 
Of such has been his atmosphere. 

When Cal was born his father kept the village 
store and he also shod horses and collected in- 
surance premiums. There is little to be done 
that he has not done. 

His father is a dirt farmer and not a 

so-called gentleman farmer, by which 

is meant, that the farm supports him 

and not he the farm. 

It is a plain farm in its buildings. There never 
was a telephone upon it until August 3, 1923. 



12 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

It was later removed. The hand of civilization 
has hesitated before it. There are many like it 
in Vermont. His father married, first, Vic- 
toria Josephine Moor, the mother of the Presi- 
dent, who died March 14, 1885, when he was 
twelve years old. He later married Carrie G. 
Brown, who died in 1920, and who was as much 
of a mother to the boy in his maturer years as 
any step-mother could be. The only other child 
was a daughter, Abigail G. Coolidge, an own 
sister of Calvin Coolidge, who died March 6, 
1889, at the age of thirteen. 

John Calvin Coolidge, Junior, our hero, first 
met his father, July 4, 1872. He had not then 
formed his later faculty of fixing faces and 
names, even that of his father, a great asset in 
politics. It's sweet to hear one's name, even 
that of Jones. His name the boy wrote J. Cal- 
vin Coolidge until he located in Northampton, 
when he became simply Calvin Coolidge. With 
characteristic foresight Cal had planned to 
arrive in Plymouth independent of transporta- 
tion facilities upon a national holiday, which 
the family began to recognize with a double 
propriety, of the strength of which they then 
had small appreciation. He was born in the 



AMONG THE HILLS 



1 



Q 



rear right hand room, as one faces the house, of 
what is now known as "The Cilley Store." He 
was a red-haired baby. 

He is the first red-haired President of 
the United States. 

In his school days, he was known as "Red" 
Coolidge. In the plain atmosphere of his birth 
and in the individuality which he early devel- 
oped, he came to suggest Abraham Lincoln. He 
became known for his unique speech, that is, 
when he spoke. Calvin the Silent he was and 
always has been. When one says as little as he 
says, it ought to be good. The opportunity to 
concentrate is great. 

Calvin Coolidge was good raw material. He 
had an instinctive sense of right and character 
enough to live it out. His father says that he 
was a good and industrious boy, that he never 
had to tell him what to do for it was done. "He's 
always been that and I guess he always will be. 
He wasn't extraordinary. He did his work at 
school. He was a great hand on the farm. I 
made no rules because then there's no chance to 
break them." His teachers unite today in the 



14 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

testimony that he was a good student, quiet, 
"'kind of stately," 

dignified and not mischievous and that he kept 
to himself. He was a faithful boy. He was 
neither popular nor unpopular in the town, liked 
or disliked. If the boy Cal ever looked upon 
the hearts of the village maidens as citadels to 
be taken, his campaigns must have been con- 
ducted cunningly, for there is no justification, 
even of a suspicion. If they in their turn did 
not seek unduly to annex the scion of the leading 
house in the town, forgetting a maidenly mod- 
esty still indulged in by the old-fashioned, it 
was because he had not confided in them his 
accession to the Presidency, which Fate had de- 
creed to him. 

On one occasion, for some undetermined rea- 
son, having been found at a village dance, where 
he had refrained from leading The Quadrille, 
The Ladies Chain or indulging in The Portland 
Fancy, his grandmother, who was one of the old 
school, whatever that may mean, rewarded his 
virtue with one dollar. Cal never made a dollar 
more easily, for he and the jazz have always 
been strangers. He has always been immune 



AMONG THE HILLS 15 

from the frailties which assail human beings. 

He has never been spanked, boy or 

man, either by hand in the nursery 

or by machinery at the polls. 

One night his aunt was sleeping at the house. 
She heard steps on the first floor. Fearing the 
loss of the Coolidge crown jewels, she donned 
the kimono kept hanging in all well-appointed 
houses, opened the door and went downstairs 
where she found little Cal. He explained that 
he was filling the wood-bin, which he had forgot- 
ten. He declined to retire, in reply to her plea. 
He would finish the job. He did. Calvin Cool- 
idge never retires, he goes to bed. He is never 
ill, sometimes sick. He was born, not in Boston, 
but in Vermont. 

One Sunday morning at church when the por- 
tieres had been drawn back and the choir un- 
covered, pursuant to the practice of the times, 
and the minister was well under way, little Cal 
fell asleep, it must be confessed with some 
shame. Then a small boy, behind, forthwith 
plunged a forefinger into Cal's warm-hued hair, 
which finger he then rested upon the pew-top 
and proceeded to tump, after the manner of the 



16 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

village smith. This caused much unholy mer- 
riment in the congregation. Such homely hap- 
penings as these have been harvested with some 
difficulty, but with the hope of picturing the 
human atmosphere in which our little plant was 
nurtured. Cal first went to school in the little 
red schoolhouse at Plymouth, the building now 
having been succeeded by another. 

He early took his place upon the farm. While 
many of the boys of today are feverishly putting 
on the golf green, Cal was happy in pursuing to 
its lair the sportive potato. He early and always 
has been an artist in the mowin', where he has 
found physical strength, character and a pan- 
ama hat vital. He early became an adept in 
divorcing the lowing herd which winds slowly 
o'er the lea from the raw material which makes 
for butter and cheese. It is a rare distinction 
which has come to the bovines of Plymouth, to 
be milked by a President. He has always 
adorned a hayrake with as much facility as a 
reviewing stand. 

In later years, a cloud-burst has broken upon 
the people, portraits of Cal in smock frock and 
cowhide boots, an inheritance from his grand- 
father, his grandfather's legislative attire. The 



AMONG THE HILLS 17 

sordid have been quick to suspect and have 
looked upon them as a costume which Cal 
assumes for effect upon the electorate. 

These he wore when he was obscure. 
These he wears when he is great. 

According to the late Elihu Burritt: "It is as 
much the uniform of the English farmer laborer 
as is the red-coat that of the English soldier." 
These suspicious ones do not know Cal, for his 
essence is simplicity and sincerity. He is as 
much himself at work in smock-frock and boots 
as the sometimes effete children of Beacon 
Street, when they loll in dinner jackets, or 
decollete and lapis lazuli. 

His life became early a series of but two 
sensations, of work and recuperation for work. 
This habit has so fastened itself upon him that 
he has always gone home at vacation time to 
take his place upon the farm. He has never 
played, boy or man, marbles, baseball or any- 
thing, except for a fortnight's lapse at golf, 
when he was satisfied of the error of his way, re- 
pented, reformed, retired and denied. His only 
avocations have been the gratification of an 
almost instinctive philosophical sense with the 



18 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

best books, a love of nature which shows in his 
speeches, and the habit of walking. 

Apparently he has ordered his life 
wisely. 

He prepared for college, graduating in 1890 
at Black River Academy in Ludlow. On his 
graduation he delivered an "Oration on His- 
tory." Most of the orations in the country are 
delivered by the young in the tepid days of 
June, when "The boy stood on the burning 
deck," and "Horatius at the bridge" are com- 
mon echoes. Although qualified for college at 
eighteen, Cal studied a year at the Academy at 
St. Johnsbury, also in his native state. 

When he had exhausted the educational re- 
sources of the county, he said : "Father, do you 
want me to take my place on the farm?" There 
was no discussion at home, whether he should or 
should not go to college. His father has always 
been proud of his son; and silent, as all Cool- 
idges and Vermonters. Fate had determined 
that the boy should go. He went. This is the 
whole story of the farm, of a faithful son, indus- 
trious at home and at school. It is not a long 
story because like the boy it is a story, not of 



AMONG THE HILLS 19 

quantity but of quality. The story of the boy is 
the story of the man, the whole story. It is a 
good deal of a story. 

Cal he was. Col he is. 



CHAPTER III 
Amherst *95 

''TERRAS IRRADIE\r 

For those some few of our readers who are 
happier perhaps in some patois rather than in 
lingua Latina these words, the Amherst motto, 
are interpreted to read : Thou shalt enlighten the 
earth. Surely Calvin Coolidge has already 
removed his light from under a bushel, for his 
Alma Mater. 

September 20, 1891. stands high in the 
annals of the burg of Plymouth. Then father 
Coolidge hitched the old bay mare into the 
Tilbury to drive Cal to Ludlow to take the 
train for Amherst. It was an eventful day for 
the town and for Cal. The boy spread upon 
his cot bed his wardrobe preparatory to pack- 
ing, with all the anxious care of one about to 
take his first journey from home. There was 
a full quota of linen of a type which could be 
inverted, kno^vn familiarly as reversible cuffs. 
A sampler not unknown in those days was last 
considerately folded and enclosed by him in 

20 



AMHERST '95 21 

his reticule. Into this had been wrought words 
to read: "The Notch," in squares, each by the 
skilful and romantic hands of a maiden of 
the hamlet, who thus sought to protect for them- 
selves his heart, immune from the wiles of the 
sirens at a seminary bearing the odd name of 
Smith and lying adjacent to the academic 
domains. Their little hearts would have rippled 
and they would have qualified for sanitariums 
could they have then known that Cal was about 
to take the road which led towards Lake Cham- 
plain and the house of Goodhue, by the way 
of his college town and his adopted city of 
Northampton. Worse than this he retains the 
sampler. That great epochmarker of John T. 
Wheelwright, Harvard '76, which blazed a trail 
in literature and shrivelled Dickens, known as 
"Rollo's Journey to Cambridge," looked upon 
by Cal as a sort of Baedeker, he carefully 
tucked inside his tunic. An "interlinear," to 
interpret foreign languages, was unknown in 
his library. At the last moment he delayed 
a somewhat impatient father long enough to 
run to the village store for a supply of "Wrig- 
ley's P. K. Chewing Sweet," enough to safely 



22 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

carry* him through the fall term. His father 
was later encouraged to look upon this as a 
humanizing transition on the part of a boy who 
had hitherto done few things like other boys. 
Hence this homely incident is recited here for 
their encouragement. 

Then Plymouth had an Amherst man 
and Cal become great in the town, 

which now looks back with wonder and humili- 
ation that it could have been so easily impressed. 
In those days such a step as this was no small 
distinction, when now it is not a matter for 
notice. Then, it was a stake-buoy in the life 
of father and son, for the boy was leaving 
home for the valley of the Connecticut where 
he was to study and to live. Cal left the smock- 
frock hanging on a peg in the front entry at 
home, touching evidence of his absence. The 
cowhide boots stood in a corner of the barn 
and Cal least feared that they would be pur- 
loined for a village dance. There is strong 
suspicion that the boy broke his usual rule of 
taciturnity at the station long enough to inquire 

* A deliberate and proud use of the only split infinitive 
in Boston. Endorsed by C. C. To be noted and condoned by 
the Hon. Robert Grant, Doctor of Letters, Harvard. 



AMHERST '95 23 

the fare to Amherst. This exception was per- 
haps justified. 

Coolidge became a member of the class of 
1895. He then as now was unassuming, he went 
his own way. He was silent. What he said, 
when if he said it, was good. When he had 
unpacked his portmanteau, which travellers 
carried in those days and had deposited it with 
the reticule in the closet, and had spread about 
his room the family photographs pursuant to 
the practice of the times, not forgetting a pic- 
ture of the farm on the wall, 

he began immediately a methodical 

order of life as has always been his 

wont. 

He took no part in athletics. Hence he was not 
thus facilitated into the public notice. He 
never tackled low nor did he ever know the 
exhilaration of seeking to snare in the outer 
garden the elusive fly. He was not alive to the 
example of another Coolidge, William Henry, 
who had adorned for seven long years the 
pivotal bag at Cambridge. Only the disabili- 
ties of old age forced his retirement. Calvin 
might easily have trained down and qualified 



24 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

for the crew, if there was one, could he have 
delegated the obligation to urge it on, or, in the 
vernacular, to coach it, which goes with that 
office. 

He made friends slowly. When they knew 
him, they came. While he appeared cold on 
the outside, they found him warm on the inside. 
There was nothing about him to impress im- 
mediately any one. When he had acclimated 
himself, however, and they on their part had got 
used to him, they came to appreciate him, his 
imcommon sense, his keen and terse wit and 
comment on men and affairs. Sometimes in 
a laughing group he would sit listening in 
silence for a long time and then suddenly and 
unexpectedly utter a monosyllable which would 
convulse the house. He would come into the 
room of a friend at eight in the evening, say, 

''Hello, William,"' never Bill, 

produce a book which he read until eleven and 
then retire with a "Good-night, William." It 
was a stimulating communion. In short he was 
then as he is now, quality not quantity. He 
never spoke unless he had something to say. 
Often then he was silent. The country needs 



AMHERST '95 25 

more men like him, not men who can talk but 
men who can listen and act, deeds, not words. 

He was a faithful, good student, not bril- 
liant or spectacular in any way, but what he 
assimilated he held. The world's captains have 
not always been its quick thinkers. Although 
his father had always been able to support him 
comfortably, Cal had none of the disabilities 
of wealth and paid for his sustenance less than 
two and one-half dollars a week. There was 
no lower rate in the town, and a good rate even 
in those days. He never could seek to qualify 
for a cruise of the New York Yacht Club until 
he came into the possession of The Mayflower 
as President. 

He was known in college as "Cooley." This 
was suggested not only by his surname but 
because when he sat with those who did not 
know him well, they sought sanctuary in mittens 
and mufflers and studied the methods of the 
Eskimos for maintaining their circulations. As 
they began to think they understood him, they 
began to lay off their wraps. In his senior year at 
college, there is a portrait of him extant when 
he assumed a responsibility though only tem- 
porarily, which only the Hon. Grafton Gushing 



26 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

has safely carried in politics, he wore a stick. 
More than this and worse than this, he wore 
gloves, a white cravat and a chapeau which 
seemed to yearn for Broadway. 

Any one who can secure and will 

destroy this plate can have a seat 

in the Cabinet. 

This portrait was a distinct lapse for him. For 
once and once only, Cal was not himself. 

In the summer of 1892 on his return to 
Plymouth with a full appreciation of the rank 
of sophomore, which little can equal, he was 
invited to deliver The Independence Day 
Oration. It would have been a reflection on the 
young man to have called it simply an address. 
This distinction came naturally to him for he 
could then speak more languages than any one 
in the hamlet, or all combined. The old in- 
habitants still talk of this day and this oration. 
They say that Cal was profligate with all the 
intellectual resources of the library at Amherst. 
He walked upon the clouds. When he had 
warmed up and struck his stride, he ventured 
to emphasize the proposition: "The earth had 
shook with the hurried retreat of the British 



AMHERST '95 27 

regulars from Concord and Lexington." To 
the form of this allegation Calvin may not now 
be loyal. In its substance the earth no more 
than teetered then as set off against the magni- 
tude of the Great War. The youth may have 
imbibed too freely at the academic fount. For 
once he played upon the passions of an audi- 
ence. Under the power of his oratory, eyes 
were dimmed, throats choked and brakemen 
collapsed like anemic women. 

That day Cal pulled out every stop. 

From that day, the natives came to look for his 
vacation summers on the farm with a certain 
mingled dread and joy, for home he always 
came, for with him work was an avocation. 

In his junior year Coolidge entered into the 
college debates where his clear perception of 
issues made a marked impression. In that year 
a local bard in The Amherst Olio emphasizes 
the unhappy fact that for once Cal was asleep 
at the switch, in these lines: 

"The class in Greek was going on; 
Old Ty a lecture read — 
And in the row in front there shone 
Fair Coolidge's golden head. 



28 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

"His pate was bent upon the seat 
In front of him; his hair 
Old Tyler's feeble gaze did meet, 
With fierce and ruddy glare. 

"O'ercome by mystic sense of dread, 

Old Ty his talk did lull — 
'Coolidge, I wish you'd raise your head, 

I can't talk through your skull!' " 

In his senior year he entered a contest open 
to seniors in all American colleges and uni- 
versities and won a first prize of one hundred 
dollars for an essay: "The Principles of the 
Revolutionary War." During the summer eve- 
nings his father had noticed him much at the 
table in the sitting room, with books and papers. 

When he wanted the lamp, Cal had it. 

He did not ask him what he was doing. Cal 
never told him. If he ever learned, it was 
undoubtedly through the columns of The Blue- 
berry. 

Coolidge was asked to deliver the Grove 
Oration, when he graduated. This was strong 
recognition of his wit. This oration takes its 
name because delivered in the college grove. 



AMHERST '95 29 

Coolidge was always modest. He never sought 
a place in the sun. Hence he was very happy 
in the shade of the grove. He graduated with 
the degree of A.B., cum laude, or, for our 
little readers, with praise. When in June, 
1919, President Meiklejohn for the college gave 
him the honorary degree of LL.D., he spoke of 
his essence as 

"adequate brevity.^' 

There is a distinct propriety in recording 
here an estimate of Calvin Coolidge by George 
D. Olds, A.M., LL.D., Acting President of 
Amherst College. "The Class of 1895 is a class 
of which the college is peculiarly proud. 
Among his classmates and contemporaries were 
Dwight W. Morrow of J. P. Morgan and Com- 
pany; Herbert L. Pratt, Vice-President of the 
Standard Oil Company of New York; Lucius 
R. Eastman of Hills Brothers; Professor Allen 
Johnson of Yale; Cornelius J. Sullivan, a well 
known New York lawyer; Frank D. Blodgett, 
President of Adelphi College, Brooklyn; the 
late Charles D. Norton, banker and financier; 
George D. Pratt, who was a conservation com- 
missioner under Governor Whitman; Edward W. 



30 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

Capen, Dean of the Hartford Theological Semi- 
nary; Professor Eugene W. Lyman of the Union 
Theological Seminary; Harlan F. Stone, Dean 
of the Columbia Law School ; Ex-Mayor Walter 
R. Stone of Syracuse; Professor Archibald L. 
Bouton of New York University; Howard Hal- 
ligan, Vice-President of the Western Electric 
Company; Professor Frederic B. Loomis of 
Amherst; Roberts Walker, a former President 
cff The Rock Island Railroad Company; Percy 
Deering, Coolidge's roommate, prominent since 
in the public life of Maine. 

"Coolidge early revealed the characteristics 
which have made his personality so marked in 
public as well as private life. He was taciturn, 
reticent, epigrammatic in his way of speaking, 
with unusual poise for a first year man. Self- 
control and will power were evident in his every 
act. He was methodical in the extreme, always 
in his place yet never in haste. 

He seemed always to have time to 
do the right things a man to whom 
an emergency was an opportunity. 

He was not what is called a good mixer. 
Indeed it was in a way hard to know him in the 



AMHERST '95 31 

early days of his college life. He did not 
join a college fraternity at the outset of his 
course, but, when an upper class man, became 
a charter member of the Amherst Chapter of 
the Phi Gamma Delta Fraternity. His class- 
mates did not wake up to the possibilities of 
the man until late in his course when they sud- 
denly became aware of his wisdom touched 
with whimsical humor. At the close of his 
course he won the distinction of being chosen 
Grove Orator, the humorous speaker of Class 
Day, and left the impression of having been 
one of the best Grove Orators that Amherst had 
known for years. 

"There were few electives in Coolidge's day 
and he enjoyed, shall we say, the advantages 
of a rather rigid curriculum. The record shows 
that he did good work in mathematics, English 
and French. Unlike most of his college mates 
he had the courage to carry his mathematics 
through a second year. He was interested in 
Greek and Latin, and it is a significant fact that 
two of his important addresses since he entered 
public life have been in advocacy of the clas- 
sical curriculum. In the latter part of his 
course there was some freedom of choice and 



32 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

he became especially interested in debating, 
philosophy, history, and political science. 
Amherst was at the time a college containing 
less than four hundred students. Indeed, the 
Class of 1895 entered less than one hundred 
strong. There were, however, upon the Faculty 
strong and inspiring teachers who, by their 
scholarship and personality, had a profound 
effect upon their pupils. It will not be invidi- 
ous to name two of the teachers who had an 
especially marked influence upon the man who 
was to be their most distinguished pupil, Anson 
D. Morse and Charles E. Garman. Morse was 
a very learned, wise, and essentially judicial 
man, and his open-minded, judge-like treatment 
of the facts of history made a strong appeal to 
a man of Coolidge's mental make-up. Morse's 
teaching may have confirmed in him a tendency 
that has characterized him all through life, 
teaching him that if one can only use deliber- 
ation, intellectual self-control, and a wise man's 
balance, many serious difficulties of thought 
and action vanish into thin air. 

But it ivas Garman who had the most 
profound effect upon Coolidge. 



AMHERST '95 33 

Report has it that a volume containing teach- 
ings of this, Amherst's most distinguished Pro- 
fessor of Philosophy, has always been at hand 
on Coolidge's table. Certain it is that Gar- 
man's teachings entered into the very tissue of 
the thought and life of the man who is now 
guiding the destinies of the country. 

^'Coolidge always had in him some- 
thing of the philosopher.'^ 

He showed at the very outset of his college 
course that he was of the reflective type, an 
independent thinker; and Carman's chief object 
was to develop this tendency in his pupils, to 
make them handle great philosophical ques- 
tions as real problems. Again and again in 
Coolidge's addresses one finds evidence of 
Carman in thought and expression. Consciously 
or unconsciously, this teacher seems to be with 
him at all times. One need only instance cer- 
tain salient points in Carman's teaching to make 
this clear to those who are familiar with "Have 
Faith in Massachusetts" and other public utter- 
ances of the President. "Weigh the evidence." 
"Process not product." "Carry all questions 



34 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

back to fundamental principles." "The ques- 
tion how answers the question what. 

"Finally, if Coolidge's classmates could be 
consulted, they would surely agree on one thing 
about the man. 

The basis of his philosophy of life 

and of the way in which he has met 

difficult situations in his public 

career was ethical. 

They would agree that faith was the keynote 
of all that he has done. He had faith in his 
college, in Massachusetts, in the Nation, in great 
fundamental principles. He had faith that the 
questions which divide men must be settled on 
the basis of righteousness. In college, as since 
graduation, he was true, straightforward, frank, 
absolutely sure of only one thing, that truth is 
mighty and will prevail." 

Of such then was Calvin Coolidge. He was 
about to plunge off the diving board of youth 
into the strong currents of life which were to 
carry him far. 



CHAPTER IV 
Bar, Ballots and Babes 

^'A wise old owl lived in an oak; 
The more he saw, the less he spoke. 
The less he spoke, the more he heard: 
Why cant we be like that old bird?" 

This is a story of bottles so far only as it 
suggests old wine of a good vintage and of a 
great value and of drinks of milk only, with a 
high respect for the eighteenth amendment, law, 
order and its great apostle. 

Calvin Coolidge upon graduation from Am- 
herst College returned to Plymouth, where 
pursuant to his always fancy he took his place 
upon the farm for the summer months for work 
and recuperation. He had come to know North- 
ampton towards which Amherst naturally turns 
and fond of nature he had become attached to 
the natural beauty of the Connecticut Valley so 
that when he decided to begin the study of law 
it was in Northampton. Its scholastic atmos- 
phere unconsciously drew him. When asked at 

35 



36 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

college where he was going to locate, he replied: 
^^Northampton, ifs nearest^ 

He never went to a law school because he could 
not afford to do so and he had character 
enough to prosecute his studies in the atmos- 
phere of a law office. In such an atmosphere, 
the weak waver. 

On September 23, 1895, he entered the office 
of Hammond and Field, the leading lawyers of 
the city. Curiously, the Hon. John C. Ham- 
mond, a leader of the bar, had happened to be 
passing through the grove at Amherst when 
Coolidge was speaking. He stopped, sat down, 
stayed, listened. He welcomed him into the 
office. Coolidge's investments even then paid 
him the sure rate of bonds. Strangely, Edward 
A. Shaw registered in the office five days later. 
Coolidge as Governor put him on the Superior 
Bench. This meritorious appointment has a 
sentimental charm. Calvin Coolidge was ad- 
mitted to the bar, July 2, 1897, after a study of 
twenty months, symbolic of his application. 
Then he laid down a book of compelling plot, 
Blackstone's Commentaries, seldom reopened. 
Those were the days before the present high 



BAR, BALLOTS AND BABES 37 

fixed state standards. Each applicant for the 
bar could come to Suffolk, where the examina- 
tions were stiffest, or appear before his own 
county examiners for an oral examination. 
These varied with the counties and their exam- 
iners. Some young men were qualified for prac- 
tice and to jeopardize great property interests 
after perhaps only diagnoses of their respira- 
tion and pulse. In those days Coolidge pre- 
sented himself in Hampshire County. Its stand- 
ards stood high. 

He never established himself as a leading 
lawyer although 

he was equipped with a fine legal 
mind. 

The opportunity was also his, under the patron- 
age of such leaders as John C. Hammond and 
Henry P. Field, but he followed his bent as all 
young men should. A family once spent fifty 
years to establish a son as a real estate operator 
and failed when had he early been given his 
head he would have led as a landscape gardener, 
which trade they did not happen to fancy. 
When Coolidge entered the office of Hammond 
and Field, the former was elected District-Attor- 



38 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

ney and the latter Mayor. The political atmos- 
phere apparently was contagious. Fate pointed 
the path and the country lost a Chief -Justice but 
found a President. 

As a lawyer, Coolidge had a mind which 
formed conclusions concisely and with original- 
ity, not merely absorbing the current wave of 
opinion. He did not necessarily do what 
"they," a mighty word, said. When he bought 
a hat he bought what he liked and not neces- 
sarily what he was told "they" wore. Nine men 
out of ten do otherwise. He was fitted for the 
accurate work of a learned lawyer. His life, 
however, so early went into the science of poli- 
tics that he was not known much for his work as 
a lawyer. 

The philosophy of measures and men 
held him most. 

His thinking on all public questions brought 
original, concise and accurate conclusions, 
which found expression in apt and unique writ- 
ten words. Northampton, without regard to 
party, has always supported him and believed 
in him. He early chose the science of politics 
in its best sense, which means statesmanship, as 



BAR, BALLOTS AND BABES 39 

his study and career and from time to time ave- 
nues have opened to him so that he has been able 
to continue in that direction. There has been no 
surprise at his each advance except perhaps the 
last. There is a local confidence that Coolidge 
can carry on in the high place to which he has 
been called. He was always modest. When, in 
the office of Hammond and Field, one of his 
associates found, apparently mislaid in his 
desk, a medal which he had won in college, he 
asked him why he had not sent it home. He 
replied: "I did not think it would interest my 
folks." He later established the firm of 
Coolidge and Hemenway. 

Fancy and opportunity led Coolidge into poli- 
tics. He took the first logical step for any 
novitiate. In 1899 he served as a Councilman 
in Northampton, the humblest office under our 
form of government. This was an unpaid office 
and he sou^t this kind of a political beginning 
for what he could give and not for what he 
could get, not for recognition but for service. 
He established himseK in the confidence of his 
fellow-citizens and they then proceeded to give 
him all they had. He began to proceed surely 
but steadily. He was City Solicitor in 1900 



40 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

and in 1901. To one belligerent Councilman, 
apparently without the gift of prophecy, who 
boasted that he had not voted for him, Coolidge 
replied : 

^'Somebody did."' 

His political horizon broadened, for in 1903 he 
was appointed for a few months Clerk of Courts 
for Hampshire County. He declined an election. 
He was Chairman of the Republican City Com- 
mittee in 1904. He was Mayor in 1910 and 
1911, during a hiatus between his service as 
Representative and Senator. He materially cut 
down the municipal indebtedness. In his read- 
ing. The Springfield Republican became to him 
a Bible and, although a paper of editorial inde- 
pendence, he one of its saints. The long time 
guiding head of this paper, Solomon Bulkeley 
Griffin, has now retired, a patriarch of journal- 
ism of the best sort. He gave the paper a mo- 
mentum which has carried it far. His ever 
busy mind has contributed to literature, from 
long years of experience with public men and 
measures, an interesting and invaluable record 
of comment and conclusion. 

Calvin Coolidge met the woman who was later 



BAR, BALLOTS AND BABES 41 

to become his wife, Miss Grace Anna Goodhue, 
when she was a teacher in The Clark School for 
the Deaf at Northampton. Of this school he 
later became a Patron, and some wag has sug- 
gested that under him the school might with 
much propriety establish a branch for the dumb. 
When asked if she had ever been troubled by 
his reluctance to speak, she replied, wittily, that 
she had learned patience with those suffering 
from physical disabilities. She was the daughter 
of the late Andrew L Goodhue of Burlington, 
Vermont, who died April 25, 1923, leaving a 
widow, Elmira Goodhue, the mother of Grace 
Anna Coolidge. He was a prominent man in 
the town. He was a deacon in the College Street 
Congregational Church and an inspector of 
steamboats on Lake Champlain since 1886. 
He had the cheer of his daughter. 

Grace Goodhue was a graduate of the Burl- 
ington High School in 1897, where she read a 
paper on 

''The Tramp Instinct/' 

which apparently reconciled her mind to the 
trail for the White House. She graduated from 
the University of Vermont in 1902. She is an 



42 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

admirable complement to the President. When 
if he seeks to fuse with the people, she is his 
vital link. She is a successful blender. She is 
of attractive appearance. She has a bright 
mind. She tactfully declines to commit herself 
on public questions that she may not embarrass 
her husband. 

The courtship of Coolidge was unique. 
Should he have sought letters patent on it, it 
would not have been litigated. They must have 
been drawn towards one another by their 
apparently utter diversity. He laid much con- 
fidence on the power of propinquity, sitting and 
silence. In the stress of rivalry he bought a 
pair of skates, but he wore them once only, as he 
was unable to maintain the pace. When he 
sought to bring the campaign to a climax, he 
presented himself before Andrew Goodhue. 
He said: "I've come to marry Grace." "Does 
she know it," he was asked. "No," he replied, 
"Not now, but she will." On this great ques- 
tion, Andrew Goodhue and his wife Elmira, 
after taking an inventory of the future Presi- 
dent, preserved an attitude of strict neutrality 
which would have thrilled even Woodrow 
Wilson. Asked once by a representative of the 



BAR, BALLOTS AND BABES 43 

press for the romance of her marriage, Grace 
Goodhue Coolidge replied: "Have you ever 
seen my husband?" 

There could have been, however, but one out- 
come to the campaign. Calvin Coolidge had 
never been repulsed. When the hour ripened 
for action, he gently spread a kerchief upon 
the carpeted floor on Maple Street. With char- 
acteristic foresight even then he sought to pro- 
tect his right pant, for trousers were not in those 
days worn in Burlington, as he knelt before his 
ideal. He put to her a question, great for him, 
simple for her. He is a man of honor. He laid 
before her his disabilities. 

He confided to her alone that Fate 
had pointed to the Presidency for him. 

With rare tact, respecting his vagaries, she 
replied in a monosyllable: "Yes." They were 
married, October 4, 1905. If Grace Anna 
Goodhue Coolidge has ever deplored her de- 
cision, she has had too much loyalty to the 
President to betray it. She is a woman of 
charm, tact and efficiency. Although unrecog- 
nized by public office, she has as large an 
interest as any one in the Calvin Grace Coolidge 



44 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

Company, of which the President is, of course, 
a silent partner. When Calvin Coolidge came 
into the Presidency of the United States, he 
came into his second greatest honor and respon- 
sibility. He had for eighteen years been 
already acclimated. 

The Coolidges have two sons, John Coolidge, 
born September 7, 1906, and Calvin Coolidge, 
Junior, bom April 13, 1908. The boys have 
been educated in a democratic atmosphere at 
the public schools in Northampton and are now 
at Mercersburg Academy in Pennsylvania pre- 
paring, of course, for Amherst College. John 
is like his mother, Calvin like his father. John 
was at the Devens Camp in August, 1923, 
although he was under age. The father is 
an admirable judge of capacity. John has 
a high respect for his father and knows this. 
In acknowledging a simple gift, John wrote the 
donor: 

^'Father says you are a great man and 
ought to be in Washington.'' 

It would be improper to identify the donor 
more than to say that he is his first biographer. 
Calvin Coolidge, Junior, worked upon a tobacco 



BAR, BALLOTS AND BABES 45 

field at Hatfield in the summer of 1923 for 
three dollars and one-half a day. He appar- 
ently made a good trade for a boy. When 
asked about his father, he said: "Yes, I sup- 
pose he is President. Which shed shall I work 
in?" He has not inherited garrulity. Both 
boys have, however, inherited the spirit of prep- 
aration. 

The family are members of the Edwards 
Congregational Church in Northampton. Be- 
fore the Men's Club of this church, Coolidge 
once asked one of his legislative colleagues 
to speak. He is a wit and he lamented in his 
opening that a college town should have sent 
to the Senate, an office which is respected at 
least in Boston, such a noisy and otherwise 
undesirable man as Coolidge. One of his 
audience, after the talk, who knew Coolidge, of 
course, with a fine sense of humor, said to the 
speaker: "Young man, seeing that Coolidge got 
you this opportunity, I think you have spoken 
of him in very poor taste." 

The Coolidges have always lived simply. 
The President continues to vote in Northamp- 
ton, where the family have one-half of a double 
wooden house at twenty-one Massasoit Street. 



46 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

His salary as President is seventy-five thousand 
dollars a year. His Northampton house rental 
is thirty-two dollars a month, recently raised 
from thirty. He lives within his income, it is 
thought, apparently with reason. 

The family might with some reason 
adopt as its crest a Cal-la lily. 

His landlord is ready to evict his other tenant 
for any one who can prove that he has been, is 
or will be President of the United States. 

Over the fireplace at Northampton are the 
words which introduce this dissertation on 
Bar, Ballots and Babes, 

undoubtedly the inspiration of 
our hero. 



CHAPTER V 
His Unofficial Life 

Calvin Coolidge became of age, July 4, 
1893. He held no public office until 1899. He 
was also in private life in 1902, 1905, 1906 and 
1909. These years, after July 2, 1897, when he 
was admitted to the bar, he practiced law exclu- 
sively. He is now in his fourteenth consecutive 
year as an office-holder. In thirty years, he has 
held public office, twenty-one years. 

Again, not a story of quantity. 



47 



CHAPTER VI 
Up Beacon Hill 

''And while the tired waves vainly 
breaking 
Seem here no painful inch to gain. 
Far back through creek and inlet making 
Comes silent flooding in the main." 

— Clough. 

This is a story of progress and of patience, 
the story of the pendulum, one tick at a time, 
the story of the ladder, one round at a time, 
no jumps. It is a short story and a thrilling 
story. It ought to stimulate the conviction in 
the heart of every young American that 
America is a democracy of the right sort, the 
country of law, order and opportunity and that 
the greatest office known to civilization is within 
his grasp if only he shapes his course for the 
stars. 

Calvin Coolidge is essentially a politician, 
a dangerous term which is much abused. 
Augustus Peabody Gardner, Congressman and 
soldier, A Pioneer for Preparedness, was a 
politician and he boasted that he was. Where 

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UP BEACON HILL 49 

he led, any one should hope to follow. A poli- 
tician is one who seeks to live out the study 
of government and of men. It is as high- 
minded an aspiration to seek to save a country 
in times of peace by the ballot as in times 
of war by the bullet. The best estimate of 
Calvin Coolidge is not as a farmer or as a 
lawyer but as a politician, for this is his trade. 
In January, 1907, Coolidge turned from the 
half-mile track of city politics to the Grand 
Circuit on Beacon Hill. He was in appear- 
ance and inclinations much as he is today. He 
was sparse of structure; and sparse of hair, 
which with growing modesty had dulled into 
a quieter shade. He was a well-read man. There 
was nothing about him to startle or to draw any 
one who simply looked at him. He was still 
a Vermonter with a Yankee twang. This 
apparently troubled him little, for he has never 
attempted to revise it. His voice qualifies more 
for an executive chamber than for the hustings. 
It will never jeopardize in opera the memory 
of the late Enrico Caruso. Some close to him 
say that he is proud of it. The Lord loveth 
whom He chasteneth and the Scriptures abound 
not onlv in the virtues but also in the faults 



50 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

of the prophets. He is a tout ensemble, which, 
while it might be looked upon with some sus- 
picion at Lenox or at Newport, has proved 
itself an asset at the ballot box. 

Coolidge had come to sit in the Massachusetts 
House for two years, 1907 and 1908, to be 
stirred and stimulated by its traditions. Here 
hangs the sacred codfish, symbolic curiously 
of a State then great in its fisheries but now 
great in its manufactures. There might well 
also hang there in these days a spindle and 
a bobbin. 

Lord Bryce says that there is no 

greater legislative body, in its dignity 

and efficiency. 

Strangely, the electorate are quick to spatter 
it, forgetting that they only spatter themselves, 
for they create it. It is as great and as small 
as the people, for it represents the people, who 
elect it. In it are the straight and the sinuous, 
the bee and the sluggard, the pulchritudinous 
and the plain, the scintillating and the stupid, 
the well and the sick. The same men are found 
inside as are found outside, and now more 
than one woman, like pansies among weeds. 




The Herald. C. C. R. M. W. 

THE MASSACHUSETTS LEGISLATURE 

The Mock Session, June 20, 1913 
A Human Lapse 



UP BEACON HILL 51 

An office, great or small, is what the man who 
holds it makes it. The most forgotten blade 
of grass in the most distant district has some 
one to protect it. The incoming legislator is 
awed by the atmosphere. When he is first 
recognized by the Speaker, he stutters, stam- 
mers and stumbles. He is overpowered by 
the Speaker on his splendid dais. He forgets 
that he is only human, and that towards even- 
tide he sits perhaps in unprotected hose like 
some other men. No one who has sat there 
would have sat elsewhere. It is a hall of legis- 
lation, primarily. It is a house of human 
nature, anecdotes, friendships which abound 
and long linger. It is a great clubhouse 
maintained by the State at one-half million 
dollars a year, where an audience always 
awaits and more, a gallery. Those were 
"halycon" days said one alumnus, careless of 
his diction in his affectionate retrospection. 

Coolidge on reaching Boston went from The 
North Station on foot to The Adams House, 
the Mecca of all west State politicians. When 
he had superscribed the register and for the 
first time had heard the word, 

''front;' 



52 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

no one watched him, crossed over to read his 
name, pursuant to the practice of hostelries and 
to look at him. He was assigned to an upper 
inner chamber looking out, not onto Mount 
Washington or the Atlantic but into an inner 
area. He was not assigned to the Presidential 
suite nor would he have been had he owned 
the hotel. He was happier where he was in 
an atmosphere of simplicity. Few sought him, 
which welcome he was content to reciprocate 
with even drooping warmth, this with no effort. 
Had he found the print of a foot upon the mat 
before his door, he would have experienced 
emotions akin to those of the derelict Crusoe 
when he found upon the sands the marks of the 
savage. 

He was then as he is today and he was not 
elected President of the United States then 
because he was not known. He had to be known 
to be appreciated. He was taciturn then as 
today but he spoke with a wise caution and 
often what he said was touched up with a 
Lincolnesque humor which gave much satis- 
faction to those who sat about him, that is 
when he was not alone as he often was. He 
was less slow to respond to a question than 

'A 



".' 



UP BEACON HILL 53 

to initiate communion. When he lunched, it 
was not at The Bellevue with Tom White and 
other bon vivants. No one seemed to know 
where he ate. When he ate, however, if he 
ate, he was true to Vermont and its traditions, 
for when the luncheon drew near to the tooth- 
picks he was sure to order placed before him a 
piece of pie and, not a demi-tasse but a large 
cup of coffee. These are infallible tests of the 
Vermont thoroughbred. 

He moved then as now, always quietly 
like a high-grade motor fresh from 
the factory. There were no loose 
bolts. There was no scarcity of 
lubricant. 

He was apparently indifferent as to whether 
his name was displayed on the front pages of 
the press or close to the mortuary column, and 
perhaps happier when placed in the latter 
space. When at rare intervals he was asked 
to join a motor party, he sat in silence in the 
"bin" over intervals of miles, recognizing no 
obligation to light up his playmates, his intellect 
fixed, apparently content in listening, thinking 
and maintaining the draft in what by courtesy 



54 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

may be called a cigar, not a perfecto. He 
simply flopped. In his own words, "I have not 
been hurt by what I have not said." He was 
seldom found supine upon the benches of the 
rotunda which abounded in his colleagues, but 
he could have been often located by any cour- 
ageous explorer in his own boudoir, reading 
a book or a paper, gazing in thought out of 
the window, perhaps at a ventilator, or even 
lying on the bed for recuperation. For he 
never forgot the day that was to come, body 
and mind. Had The League of Nations become 
the power it was planned, he would not have 
dallied with the Presidencv but he would have 
stepped immediately to the head of that great 
association. He was never emotional, always 
stoical, never angry, always courteous. Such 
he was. Such he is. As he grew in strength, 
his constituency grew in versatility. 

All men seemed to he with him and 
there marched behind him an army. 
High potentates of the church com- 
manded one wing and ^'The Black 
Horse Cavalry" the other. 

In the same dilution in which Roosevelt said 



UP BEACON HILL 55 

he digested Piatt, so our hero was never skit- 
tish about his playmates whether they taught 
Sunday school or not so long as they could 
help in a cause which looked good to him. He 
was a mystery then, even to those who thought 
they knew him. 

He is a mystery now. 

This augments his political availability and he 
probably knows, recognizes and values it. 

When the Legislature convened, Calvin Cool- 
idge was presented to Martin Lomasney, looked 
upon as a fashionable procedure. It is popu- 
lar to daub Lomasney in the back "deestricts" 
as a dangerous citizen. His hair is wasted 
enough, however, to show that he wears no horns 
and his feet are shaped quite regularly. Mar- 
tin looked upon the boy, attempting to classify 
him as he does every one, wondering as he says 
whether he was a school teacher or an under- 
taker. If he diagnosed him wisely at that early 
day, it was as a Ford car with a Pierce motor. 

Coolidge did not come to Boston unarmed 
but with a letter of introduction to the then 
Speaker, John N. Cole. He was a great pre- 
siding officer, so was the Hon. John L. Bates, 



56 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

none greater. This introduction was in the mat- 
ter of his committee appointments, borne by 
young legislators fresh from the egg, pursuant 
to the practice of the times. It is to be hoped 
that this letter was sealed when it was handed 
to him by his fellow townsman, the Hon. Rich- 
ard W. Irwin, now a Judge of the Superior 
Court, for it read in this way, simply: 

"^e'5 better than he looks, like a 
singed cat." 

In 1911 Irwin had no more sincere endorser 
for his elevation to the bench than Calvin Cool- 
idge. He became the first of his fellow citizens 
to sleep in "the spare-room" at the White 
House. This letter was read in the spirit in 
which it was written, for John Cole later 
appointed Coolidge to the Committee on Judici- 
ary. This was the place he wanted, if he wanted 
any place. With this place he was content as 
he was always content, for he never forced a 
controversy, although he was ever ready to take 
a stand on the issues which came his way. 
Hence he had bided his time for coming to the 
House from Northampton, when he could come 



UP BEACON HILL 57 

without opposition. And a Republican, he came 
from a district which was then Democratic. 

It is significant of the man that a member of 
his capacity should have never received a House 
Chairmanship, or have been put on Judiciary 
until his second year. This was because his 
nature could not impress, immediately, its vir- 
tues on those around him, and he saw this and 
he was content to wait for the time when they 
would become known and recognized. 

In his service in the House he was re- 
spected. He showed his independence. 

He took a firm stand for a small, independent 
oil refiner named Hisgen of Springfield in a bill 
which was strenuously opposed by the great 
Standard Oil Company. He was instrumental 
in getting on the books an anti-monopoly law 
and his work in codifying the banking laws of 
the State was also of far-reaching importance. 
If any of his colleagues in those days had dared 
to foretell that he would have been elected Gov- 
ernor, he would have been retired to a retreat. 
In his service he was content to do the day's 
work. He did not seek the notice of the press 
or of any one. He was not looked upon as a 



58 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

leader of the House, where such men as Gush- 
ing, Norman White, Walker and now Congress- 
man Luce were prominent. He was a child of 
Vermont. He was proud of her although he had 
a high respect for his step-mother, Massachu- 
setts. When a Senator interested in legislation 
ventured into the House, Coolidge lavished his 
twang upon his seat-mate: 

"What^s he maousin 'raound the 
Haouse for?'^ 

In his journeys between Northampton and the 
Capitol, he always travelled the so-called back 
way, not by Springfield but through Ware, Barre 
and Holden. He looked out of the car windows, 
not for factories but for farms. He became a 
familiar figure on the trains. At the end of 
1908 he retired to Northampton. 

He had not yet churned his wake 
white. 

In 1912 Calvin Coolidge came to Beacon 
Hill again and to stay. He served then in the 
Senate for four years, the last two as President. 
Pursuant to his policy of patience, he had de- 
layed his candidacy and his return until his 



UP BEACON HILL 59 

predecessor, the Hon. Allen T. Treadway, boni- 
face and Congressman, had served his custom- 
ary three years as President of the Senate and 
voluntarily retired. Calvin Coolidge was un- 
willing to crowd him or anybody. When some 
one lamented to him the size of his district and 
the difficulty of covering it, he replied: "It's 
just as hard for my opponent." While a mem- 
ber of the upper branch, he never made trouble 
for his Senate President, his Governor or any 
one. He looked upon himself as a cog in the 
government, to do his part, to follow the leaders. 

He never sought to make history for 
himself. Most men seek to do little 
else, their country second, if at all. 

In 1912, his first year as Senator, he per- 
formed a signal service as Chairman of the Spe- 
cial Legislative Committee on Reconciliation. 
This committee was formed to take jurisdiction 
of the Lawrence strike. Coolidge met the sit- 
uation with tact, efficiency and solution. Indus- 
trial peace was reestablished. In 1913 the sec- 
ond year of his service, he was made Chairman 
of the Committee on Railroads, no more impor- 
tant appointment. Again significantly this rec- 



60 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

ognition did not come to him immediately. 
Nothing did. As a member of the Senate he 
secured the passage of the anti-discrimination 
law which has proved of great advantage. He 
backed "the full crew bill" and since that time 
has had the united support of the train men. In 
those days the Railroad Committee had jurisdic- 
tion over the great question of the legislative 
year, the New Haven issue. He listened much. 
He said little. His humor stood by him, like 
Abraham Lincoln. At one of the hearings, a 
feverish petitioner had suggested that Charles 
Sanger Mellen be sent to jail, a popular pastime 
in those days. It must bring the former Colos- 
sus of Roads much innocent amusement to note, 
that his great policies, which the government 
opposed then, it favors now. At that hearing 
a participant, who wore his hair pompadour in 
his zeal as a child of the people, said: "Mr. 
Mellen, if I were Governor you would not thrive 
in Massachusetts five minutes." Then Mellen 
replied, in his soft voice, and he was a master 

with the rapier: "Perhaps, Mr. , that's the 

reason you are not Governor." The art of irony 
has a strong back-kick which did much to locate 
permanently Mr. Mellen in Council Grove. He 



UP BEACON HILL 61 

was ready to pay the price. All such artists are. 
To go back, this feverish petitioner then said to 
the Chairman that he would retire unless he 
desired to interrogate him further. Then Cool- 
idge said: "Retire, unless you are willing to 
remain and protect the Committee from these 
railroad lawyers present." One of his coarse 
colleagues once approached him, irreverently: 
"Cal," said he in the crude colloquial, "loosen 
up, lapse, humanize yourself and lunch with 
me, today." Coolidge simply nodded. No. About 
noon he motioned to him to approach, with this 
enthusiastic invitation, sotto vocie: "Mrs. 
Coolidge and I lunch at The Bellevue at one. 

Come, if you want." 

It was impossible to resist. Invited to speak 
at the opening of the Town Hall in Weston he 
was asked what he was going to say. He replied : 
"I do not know," and then later produced a 
manuscript which he read. 

He was always a student, always prepared, 
always looking forward. He showed an unlim- 
ited familiarity with the bills before his Com- 
mittees, going in 1913 before The Ways and 
Means Committee with an elaborate bill which 



62 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

his Committee on Railroads had reported, the 
so-called Washburn Bill, and talking on it from 
all angles as intelligently as the counsel who 
had been hired to study it. To his then House- 
Chairman of the Committee, with reference to an 
attitude he had taken on a bill before them, he 
wrote: 

"Sand your tracks, you're slipping/* 

He was Chairman of the Committee on Resolu- 
tions at Worcester, at a Republican convention, 
October 3, 1914, which nominated the Hon. 
Samuel W. McCall for Governor. At one of 
its hearings when he was asked a pointed ques- 
tion, he twirled his chair towards the window 
and looked out in silence. Some one said to 
Governor McCall, who stood near by: "I could 
take dictation from that man and in long hand." 
The Governor often tells this story. Coolidge 
did not remain to mix with the delegates at the 
hotel and his host found him later in his bed, 
the door ajar, with his trousers or rather 
pants suspended thereupon, to maintain their 
contour. 

In 1914 and 1915 he was President of the 
Senate. In 1913 the then President, the Hon. 



UP BEACON HILL 63 

Levi Greenwood, a splendid political colt, was 
unexpectedly defeated for reelection. Within 
two days of his defeat, Coolidge was assured of 
the succession. What he wanted he got, because 
it came. When he was President of the State 
Senate, he sought to soothe one Walter E, 
McLane, also a Senator, it is thought by some 
since his return from the War of 1812. He must 
have been bom on Beacon Hill. Walter had 
been told by a colleague to go where clothes are 
bought last and ice first. Cal said : "Walter, I 
have found time to examine the Constitution and 
the Senate Rules. There's nothing in them to 
compel you to go." 

No lines are more significant in explaining 
Calvin Coolidge than these which follow: 

*^ Although I am Coolidge s friend, and have 
been for years" he said, "I did not really 
understand him, until about a year ago. One 
day he came in here, and, after sitting where 
you are for the longest time, he said, out of a 
clear sky: 'Do you know, Vve never really 
grown up? It's a hard thing for me to play this 
game. In politics, one must meet people, and 
that's not easy for me.' I expressed astonish- 



64 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

ment. "No,"' he went on, 'it's been hard for me 
all my life. When I was a little fellow, as long 
ago as I can remember, I would go into a panic 
if I heard stranger voices in the house. I felt 
I just couldn't meet the people and shake hands 
with them. Most of the visitors would sit with 
Mother and Father in the kitchen and the hard- 
est thing in the world luas to have to go 
through the kitchen door and give them a greet- 
ing. I was almost ten before I realized I 
couldnt go on that way. And by fighting hard 
I used to manage to get through that door. I'm 
all right with old friends, but every time I meet 
a stranger, I've got to go through the old kitchen- 
door, back home, and it's not easy.' He was 
silent for a long time after that. Just sat look- 
ing out of the window. Then he went away with- 
out another word. He's never mentioned the 
subject since. Nor have I, but I think I can say 
I understand Calvin Coolidge now. Does it help 
to explain him to you?" 

When he appears cold, he is diffident. No 
man understands Calvin Coolidge unless he rec- 
ognizes his silence. No one understands his 
silence unless he recognizes as its original cause 



UP BEACON HILL 65 

his original diffidence. This silence he has been 
slow to eliminate because his serious attitude 
towards life has made him slow to interrupt a 
life of much thought for a life of any chatter. 

On the inside^ he is warm. 

At a luncheon of Republican leaders at a coun- 
try club, when the party was about to start for 
Norumbega Park, the whole procession was held 
up until Edward Horrigan, his bodyguard, 
could locate in an obscure part of the house 
an humble friend of the Governor to ride 
with him. One day as the Governor was 
starting from The Adams House for the Gover- 
nor's Walk across the Common to the State 
House with Horrigan, the former was pointed 
out to a stranger in the town. "He's a fine look- 
ing man," he commented, "but who's the little 
red-headed feller with him?" It was Ed Horri- 
gan's duty to protect the Governor from hunters. 
Hence naturally a wit suggested that he ought 
to be interested in a bill which was filed in the 
Legislature for a permanent close season on red 
foxes. 

In 1916, 1917 and 1918, Calvin Coolidge was 
Lieutenant-Governor. At three o'clock on the 



66 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

afternoon following his first election, when most 
successful candidates were easily congratulated 
in public places, he was found alone in that in- 
side room at The Adams House, sitting by an 
open window. In these days, the typical candi- 
date who has reconciled his mind to holding 
high public office continues to pursue the voter. 
He effusively simulates a desire to share his 
cross. He seeks to locate the strawberry-mark 
which identifies the long lost brother. As against 
him, the personality of Calvin Coolidge pre- 
sents a marked, restful and delicious contrast. 
He has never forgotten that if one would have 
the respect of others he must respect himself. 
He has taught the voter to recognize the value of 
pursuing what is not pursuing him. Calvin 
Coolidge was then, as later, loyal to his Chief, 
the Governor, and sympathetic, and unlike some 
of his predecessors he showed no impatience for 
preferment. The Hon. Samuel Walker McCall 
has the record of a scholarly statesman. He 
has a fine literary capacity. His pen is a wand. 
He is essentially a Doctor of Letters. He was 
War Governor of the State. He was for years a 
Congressman from a university district. He has 
had a creditable record. He says that Coolidge 



UP BEACON HILL 67 

as Lieutenant-Governor was loyal to him in let- 
ter and in spirit. He adds: "He was with me in 
the Council even when the votes stood seven to 
two." 

Coolidge was content to do, in his own 
words, the day's work. 

While most men in the public service starve 
for public notice and recognition, he was con- 
tent to keep the traces taut, and knee-action and 
the spectacular appeal of the leader in the tan- 
dem had no charm for him. He had estab- 
lished his qualities, humor, sound sense, taci- 
turnity, modesty and character. He had become 
a statesman. According to that eminent divine, 
the Reverend George Angier Gordon, D. D.: 

"No man can be a statesman without 
character." 

Strangely, a unique specimen like Coolidge 
has as many as two doubles and in one State, in 
form if not in substance. The delusion they 
betray by their comparative freedom of speech. 
One is the Hon. Richard Bradford Coolidge, 
Mayor of Medford. Since August 3, 1923, he 
has been a student of genealogy-, hoping to dis- 
cover a common branch with the President. The 



68 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

other is Robert Washburn Maynard, a son of the 
late Rear- Admiral. Frank Stearns, uncon- 
sciously attracted toward him, took him into the 
bottom of his business. He has pushed him like 
a son. He saw the replica. He has put him at 
the top of his business. Since Maynard began 
to write his name in full he has come fast. 

Coolidge was nominated for Governor in the 
fall of 1918, Samuel W. McCall having served 
the customary three years. When he was ready 
to retire, Coolidge was ready to proceed. 

He had not sought to facilitate his 

perferment by a critical attitude of his 

superiors. 

He believed in Republicanism and in harmony 
and was content to go up or down with his party. 
He was elected Governor and served as such in 
1919 and 1920. He made an admirable record. 
His first act was to appoint as his Secretary the 
Hon. Henry F. Long, of capacity and tact. It 
was almost a pleasure to burden him. When the 
Governor retired, he did not forget to place 
Henry Long in a comfortable official nest, after 
the manner of all Governors. He showed sound 
sense in his appointments. In his first year as 



UP BEACON HILL 69 

Governor the business system of the Common- 
wealth was reorganized and the Governor cut 
one hundred and seventeen commissions down 
to twenty, pursuant to the action of the Consti- 
tutional Convention of 1918. This delicate 
duty, involving many appointments and some 
removals, was done as well as any human could 
do it, though some good men fell by the way. 

With characteristic loyalty, he 
wrote his step-mother at Plym- 
outh, regularly, 

preoccupied as he was with his pressing public 
duties and often sent her flowers. When the 
police strike broke, he immediately wrote her 
what course he should take, which he did take. 
As Governor he was conservative and yet his 
mind was always open to forward suggestions. 
These were not "progressive," for progressive is 
a tired term and should be retired to rest and 
all Republicans should be known either as 
Backward or Forward Republicans. 

As to his personal characteristics as Governor, 
for the public is always interested in the daily 
lives of its servants, he brushed his hair regu- 
larly and his teeth. He ate when hungry. He 



70 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

slept when tired. These concessions to an 
electorate, hard to satiate in its scrutiny of the 
great, who in many ways are much like them. 
Of his toilets today when his wardrobe is 
at the peak, he has three gowns, a blue and a 
gray, business gowns, and a black morning coat 
much worn by Coolidge inaugurals. These are 
outside the smock-frock at Plymouth, which is 
also worn outside, and in which he reviews the 
live stock on the farm. He is vulnerable in the 
raiment about the base of his head where it 
meets the body, or in easy English, his neck. 
Here it must be confessed the points of his collar 
shun each other and the tie droops. Fifty cents 
and a pin, a collar of the Welch-Margetson type 
which meets and the pin deftly used to hold the 
tie, high, would make him an ideal feature on 
the landscape of society. Surely he ought to 
respond, in the exigencies of The White House. 
Representatives of the press who thought that 
they interviewed him, interviewed themselves. 
He has always apparently been indifferent as to 
whether he was personally liked or not. It 
would be a solace to a much pursued public if 
more public men would emulate this character- 
istic. His wit he has always sought to stifle, for 



UP BEACON HILL 71 

he has seen this quality destroy many men who 
would have been great. It has been a strange 
sensation to a Legislature which has seen sur- 
rounding it men with the personal charm of 
Warren, Storrs and the late Ralph D. Gillette, 
coming out of the West, to find in Coolidge one 
whose qualifications were of merit only. He 
never attacks men and seldom things. His creed 
is that progress is best made by emphasizing 
good policies and ignoring evil ones. 

As Governor, Coolidge continued to live as he 
always had, at The Adams House, with the same 
panorama before the same windows of the same 
inside upper chamber. When he last packed 
his bag as retiring Governor and slammed that 
door, he was much the same as when he first 
came into the room as Representative Coolidge, 
except that he had marked his qualities upon 
Beacon Hill and they were recognized. 

It was sweet praise of Calvin Coolidge when 
his successor. His Excellency, Channing Harris 
Cox, then set out to aspire not only to carry out 
but even to perfect the policies of his predeces- 
sor, Calvin the Silent. He then consecrated as 
one of his Secretaries a young man surnamed 
Stiller. While Coolidge is warm on the inside, 



72 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

Cox is warm on the outside. The last hope of 
the former is to warm those who park close to 
the official desk. It is the first realization of the 
latter. Neither of them is Massachusetts bom. 
It will be exceedingly unfashionable and diffi- 
cult to elect in 1924 a Massachusetts-bom 
Governor. 

In 1919, Coolidge was honored with the 
degrees of LL.D. by Amherst, Tufts and Wil- 
liams; and in 1920 by Bates, University of Ver- 
mont and Wesleyan. When he was welcomed to 
Vermont on Commencement Day as a son-in- 
law, he emphasized the untraditional warmth of 
the relation. As an evidence of his versatility, 
he is a member of the Corinthian Yacht and the 
Tennis and Racquet Clubs, among other clubs. 

He is the author of "Have Faith in Massachu- 
setts." Calvin Coolidge should have faith in 
Massachusetts for each is under an obligation to 
the other. She has done much for him. 

// Calvin Coolidge has not faith in 
Massachusetts, who should have? 



CHAPTER VII 
The Two Allies 

Capacity is quick to see and to 
seize opportunity. 

An analysis of the conditions which turned 

Calvin Coolidge towards the Vice-Presidency is 

vital in a consideration of his success and its 
causes. 

Boswell did much to make Johnson. Mark 
Hanna, with the physical vigor and mental de- 
termination which made him a leader in the 
iron industry, did much to make McKinley. 
To him he was a vital complement. The only 
man who always honestly and cheerfully wor- 
ships his creator is the self-made man. A 
public servant who has been appointed to public 
oflSce on the petition of strong endorsers is often 
quick to evade the obligation and to nurse the 
delusion that his is simply a recognition of 
virtues which could not be evaded. Luck has 
been defined as the capacity to seize oppor- 
tunity. Opportunity knocks at some doors 
often, at others once only, at others not at all. 



73 



74 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

There are many able, even brilliant men who 
have never sat in a motor of their own because 
they have been unable to see and to seize that 
market where their product may be best sold. 

The President has always been quick 
to seize opportunity with capacity. 
He is the finished product of a tri- 
umvirate: Calvin Coolidge, Frank 
Waterman Stearns and Edwin Upton 
Curtis, led by Fate. 

Calvin Coolidge would have been President of 
the United States had these two men never lived. 
It had been decreed. They simply hurried his 
feet. They were the hand-maidens of Fate. 

One whole paragraph is here deservedly and 
cheerfully conceded to Frank Waterman Steams. 
He is a leading merchant of Boston and the 
son of one. His capacity and loyalty are ex- 
ceeded only by his modesty. He forgets only 
himself. He has the respect and friendship of 
men who have established themselves in busi- 
ness, professional life and politics, and his 
family has contributed a son to the ministry. 
His business Mecca is an autographed gallery 
where the first portrait placed and seen is of 



THE TWO ALLIES 75 

Calvin Coolidge. Having made himself, his 
delight is to make others. Calvin Coolidge and 
he are both graduates of Amherst College, their 
first bond, and both are now trustees. Frank 
Stearns first fastened his eye on Calvin Coolidge 
when a petitioner for legislation for Amherst 
College he sought him on Beacon Hill 
through another. Then the mercury of Coolidge 
was poured upon his representative in its most 
shrivelled form, a fine type as an emaciated 
exhibit. Frank Steams wondered. He was 
troubled. He retired. His curiosity was stimu- 
lated. He studied him. He came to believe 
in him and to admire and to worship him. 
When he ponders him the first commandment 
is in jeopardy. His faith in Calvinism was first 
diagnosed by some as an obsession and then 
accepted by them as a religion. He is the only 
living American, if any one outside of the 
Coolidge kin, to understand the President, for 
he puzzles and appeals by the charm of mystery, 
not the least of his assets. 

Frank Waterman Stearns is the first of The 
Two Allies who have done much to reveal 
Calvin Coolidge into the Vice-Presidency. 



76 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

Frank Waterman Stearns in an interview with 
Theodore G. Joslin, the accomplished Washing- 
ton correspondent of The Boston Transcript, 
says, in part: 

"I first met the President in 1915, when he 
was President of the Massachusetts Senate. 
Some time later I sent a classmate of mine at 
Amherst College to Mr. Coolidge to ask for his 
help in getting through a bill to make it pos- 
sible to connect the college power system with 
the Amherst town system. Mr. Coolidge would 
promise nothing, and we felt quite disappointed 
that an Amherst man and a Senator from a 
district next to that in which Amherst is should 
show so little interest. When we went to have 
the bill taken up the following year, we found 
it had been passed and was law. Mr. Coolidge 
did it. We learned afterwards that when we 
first asked his aid it was too late in the session 
to obtain action that year. What impressed me 
was his refusal to promise, but his readiness 
to act when the time came. 

"This made me curious, and I made many 
inquiries about him and learned all I could 
about his record. 



THE TWO ALLIES 77 

What I learned convinced me that he 

was even then one of the ablest men 

of our generation. 

The thought came to me not then but when he 
was Lieutenant-Governor, that here was a man 
with all the qualities necessary to make a great 
President, and I cannot tell exactly why or 
how the conviction came to me that he would 
some day be President. 

"He once told me that when he was elected 
to the Legislature in Massachusetts he was re- 
garded as one who would work for reforms of 
various kinds. He became quickly convinced 

that 

administration was far behind 
legislation, 

as he put it, and that it was his duty to be 
conservative. I think he thought this may have 
disappointed some, but he was resolved that 
it was the right course, and held to it. I have 
the feeling that it was the right course and 
still hold to it. 

"I persuaded him to be the guest of honor 
at a dinner I gave about that time at The Algon- 
quin Club in Boston. There were about forty 



78 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

or fifty men of standing in the community 
present. This dinner was to enable those attend- 
ing to express their appreciation of what Mr. 
Coolidge had done up to that time, and he 
was quite surprised to learn he had attracted 
so much interest. 

"After that dinner I began urging him to be 
a candidate for the Republican nomination for 
Lieutenant-Governor. It was a most difficult 
task. The Legislature was in session and I got 
no response. After the Legislature had ad- 
journed I was with him one night at dinner. 
He handed me a piece of paper on which was 
written, 

7 am a candidate for Lieutenant- 
Governor, Calvin Coolidge.^ 

He told me I could give it to the newspapers. 
I asked him why he had delayed so long. I 
recalled to him that a gentleman of high stand- 
ing in the community had been a candidate 
for almost a year and I felt that the delay had 
injured us. 'Can't you see that any other course 
would not have been the right one,' he said. 
*The Legislature was in session, and if I had 
announced my candidacy, then, every word and 



THE TWO ALLIES 79 

action of mine would have been twisted. Legis- 
lation would have been in a mess. The public 
business would have suffered. I had to take 
that chance.' 

"When Mr. Coolidge was Lieutenant-Gov- 
ernor 1 met him often at luncheon in the Parker 
House in Boston. I arranged to have two or 
three men there to meet him, so that they could 
know him and appreciate him, as I did, and 
so that he might have the benefit of their 
ideas. 

Some of them were puzzled at 
Mr. Coolidge^s silence, 

and I doubted if they made any impression upon 
him. I mention this to bring out one of Mr. 
Coolidge's principal characteristics. This is his 
patience of investigation, his slowness of getting 
the facts, but his quickness of action. A man 
might tell him something, be disappointed or 
puzzled at his reticence, go off to play golf 
or do something else, and learn on his return 
that Mr. Coolidge had acted. He had peculiar 
ability to judge the effect of legislation, not 
in the immediate future but in the time to come. 



80 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

His thought is for the long, the per- 
manent good and not for the demand 
of the present. 

"Another thing that always impressed me 
about Mr. Coolidge is that 

he is a profound student. 

He studies to improve himself, to obtain knowl- 
edge with which to deal with questions coming 
before him and to make his study effective in 
government. 

"I naturally know of Mr. Coolidge's prob- 
lems in the Boston police strike, and should 
like to say that he never thought his course 
would win him any political advantage. It was 
never in his mind. 

/ know that he wrote a private letter, 
during those critical days, outlining 
the course he intended to follow — 
and did — and saying it would very 
possibly mean his elimination from 
politics. 

The police strike did not make Mr. Coolidge, 
as some have said, thoughtlessly. As the Rev. 
Dr. Edward T. Sullivan of Newton said, in a ser- 



THE TWO ALLIES 81 

mon at the time, the crisis did not make Mr. 
Coolidge, it revealed him. He was able to 
rise to and meet the emergency thrust upon him 

because he had kept the faith in 
small things. 

Dr. Sullivan said: Those who know him best 
realize that his action in this crisis was just 
the working out of the character in him.' 

"As I came to know Mr. Coolidge I began 
to feel sure of certain things with regard to 
him. 

First, I found him splendidly honest. 

He has been placed in a good many trying 
positions, where, if there was a yellow streak 
in him, it would almost certainly have come 
out. Perhaps the best summary of Coolidge's 
character, as I read it, is, that, among the clever 
orators, eager reformers and shrewd politicians 
by whom he is surrounded, he seems to me to 
be the one man whose thought and work are all 
constructive. That is what I, in common with 
many others, have been looking for: that is what 
I believe I have found in Mr. Coolidge. 



82 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

"Mr. Coolidge is a real progressive in 
the best sense of the ivord. 

A minister of my acquaintance once preached 
a sermon in which he said that what appears 
to be progress is quite often retrogression. He 
cited an example of a man making great haste 
toward the west when his real destination was 
the east, and said that the faster this man went 
the less progress he was making. Mr. Coolidge 
once said to me that he knows the world moves, 
and he wishes to move with it, but that he de- 
sires to know where he is going and not retro- 
gress by stepping off into a large puddle. 
Another thing about Mr. Coolidge — he is able 
to keep his mind on the actual question and 
does not allow himself to become confused with 
extraneous issues. 

"I have always felt that, with very few ex- 
ceptions, Mr. Coolidge is better known generally 
throughout the country than any other man. It 
is not that people know much about him but that 
what they know suits them and gives them a 
correct picture of the man. 

"I think this was shown conclusively when 
he became President, when there was so little 



THE TWO ALLIES 83 

apprehension over his succession. There was, 
on the other hand, widespread confidence in 
him. Since he became President he has received 
thousands of messages and the significant thing 
about them is that so many declare they have 
full confidence in him. 

'7 think that one of the many causes for 
the gratitude we owe Mr. Harding is that he 
made Mr. Coolidge, in effect, a member of his 
Cabinet, with the result, that Mr. Coolidge is 
thoroughly posted on conditions as they standi 
today." 

One plain paragraph. This, gentle reader, 
that you may understand some of the ways in 
which Frank Waterman Stearns was an efficient 
ally to Calvin Coolidge and how you may in- 
telligently either shape your own political 
course or retire to obscurity. He is a suc- 
cessful business man, skilled in the art of 
organization. Hence his counsel is wise. He 
did much to spread through the country, "Have 
Faith in Massachusetts." Further, he controls 
a business which means much advertising in 
the columns of the press. The press has never 
sought to smother in its news and editorial 
columns such men as he. Hence, when Steams 



84 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

spoke Coolidge, the press printed Coolidge. 
Gentle reader, have you ever noted that when 
you have made a speech, which, in your opinion 
has shadowed Webster, and you have feverishly 
searched the press, it has reported you some- 
what in these words: "Percy Alwin also spoke." 
Perhaps, when if you work, you are a member 
of the bar or a veterinary. If you would pro- 
ceed more rapidly, politically, then open a 
garage or enter into some other business which 
means advertising. If you will make your 
commercial business profitable to the press, then 
it is less unlikely to make political preferment 
impossible for you. Is there not a political 
son-rise now threatening in Massachusetts, nur- 
tured in part by advertising in the columns of 
the press. Ponder these sordid suggestions. 
Incidentally, Coolidge often looked into the 
business office of Stearns, where a sizeable cor- 
respondence was typed ready for his signature. 
These are some of the things Steams did for 
Coolidge, on top of what he modestly admits. 
Reader, do you now understand, in a way, what 
Steams has done for Coolidge? Have you any 
friends like him or even one like him? Can 
you not understand why Calvin Coolidge has 



THE TWO ALLIES 85 

faith, not only in Massachusetts, but also in 
Frank Waterman Steams? Each has done 
much for him. This is a plain paragraph. His 
First Biography is an honest biography. A 
biography which is not an honest biography 
is no biography and valueless except perhaps 
for the next of kin of whom it writes. 

Edwin Upton Curtis, now dead, was a citizen 
of Boston. He was a graduate of Bowdoin, a 
great son and trustee of the college. He com- 
manded his time, which he gave to the public 
service. He was a stalwart Republican. He 
had been Mayor of Boston, Collector of the 
Port and a Metropolitan Park Commissioner. 
His dominant virtues were a clear head, deter- 
mination and efficiency. He knew not fear. 

He did much to glorify the admin- 
istration of Calvin Coolidge. 

At 5.45 P.M., Tuesday, September 9, 1919, 
Edwin Upton Curtis was Police Commissioner 
of the City of Boston under appointment by 
Samuel W. McCall, a former Governor. Two- 
thirds of the police of the city had then union- 
ized. Edwin Upton Curtis had issued an order 
that all men in the service should not unionize. 



86 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

The order reads: 

"19. No member of the force shall join or belong 
to any organization, club or body composed of pres- 
ent or present and past members of the force which 
is affiliated with or a part of any organization, club 
or body outside the department, except that a post of 
the Grand Army of the Republic, the United Spanish 
War Veterans and the American Legion of World's 
War Veterans may be formed within the department." 

This order was promulgated by him under an 
authorization by the Legislature for the govern- 
ment of the police in his discretion. This order 
they had refused to respect. He had then tried 
and suspended nineteen of the force who were 
officers of the union. Then the police, this 
fraction, went on strike. The men repudiated 
the order and demanded reinstatement. The 
Commissioner demanded that the order should 
be respected and refused to reinstate the strik- 
ing police. This was the issue. The fire of 
the enemy was first fastened upon him. There 
was no hesitation on his part from the first. 
He established his position. He stood firm, to 
his everlasting honor and in jeopardy of his 
life, for to him in his condition any form of 
excitement was fraught with danger. He was 
the Belgium, and, with the Governor, the Marne 



THE TWO ALLIES 87 

of the situation. A statue is to be erected on 
The Esplanade in Boston, for which the people 
have subscribed, in honor of Edwin Upton 
Curtis. 

Edwin Upton Curtis was the second 
of The Tivo Allies ivho have done 
much to reveal Calvin Coolidge into 

the Vice-Presidency. 

Then Calvin Coolidge led up the allies which 
assured the victory. He set out to arouse the 
will of the people without which law is not 
law. In support of the Commissioner and for 
the restoration of law and order and for the 
reestablishment of the police force, he issued 
one order and two proclamations. He wired 
Samuel Gompers two messages as straight as 
electricity ever carried from a public official 
to labor, adding those words now tattooed into 
history: 

'''There is no right to strike against 
the public service by anybody, any- 
where, any time." 

He set out to create and establish a public 
sentiment behind the Commissioner which was 



88 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

invaluable. It took root. It sprouted. The 
opposition began to waver. The men who de- 
serted their posts and left the city helpless were 
not reinstated. Law and order was reestab- 
lished and a practically new police force. It 
was a great victory. 

The Commissioner and the Governor 
each was vital to the other. 

There is no man in a position to estimate 
more intelligently the Police Commissioner and 
the Governor in their attitudes towards the police 
strike than the Hon. Herbert Parker. No one 
stood closer to the crisis than he. He is a for- 
mer Attorney-General, now a lawyer in Boston, 
brilliant, with a fine sense of honor. He has 
always shown a vivid public spirit. His un- 
qualified commendation of the Governor is 
particularly significant because he was then 
counsel to the Commissioner. He gave his ser- 
vices. His compensation was simply nominal, 
necessary for his qualification under the statute 
as counsel. He says: 

''The incidents of the so-called Police Strike 
in the City of Boston, then engaging, as now 
again engage the tense interest of the public. 



THE TWO ALLIES 89 

Issues of vital significance in the administra- 
tion of Governor Coolidge pass in review. In 
the clearer light of passing time those qualities, 
which brought him at once into deserved and 
conspicuous national regard and admiration, are 
more distinctly revealed. 

"The controversy need not now be renewed, 
which, at the time, found more or less intelli- 
gent expression in the public prints and in the 
hostile opinions of those whose sympathies were 
with the members of the police force who 
abandoned their duties; or of those who be- 
lieved that credit for the ultimate vindication 
of the law, with the nation-wide recognition 
of its salutory and impressive influence and 
example, should be ascribed either to the Gov- 
ernor, Mr. Curtis, the Police Commissioner, or 
to others in political life. 

"The Police Commissioner, by provision of 
law, is appointed by the Governor, and Mr. 
Curtis was so appointed by a predecessor of 
Governor Coolidge. His powers and duties, 
conferred and imposed by statute, made him 
solely responsible for the civil guardianship 
of the City of Boston as executive head of the 
Police Department. With the administration of 



90 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

his office no other authority could interfere, nor 
could he divide or share his responsibility with 
any other official of the City or State. 

"Openly and defiantly members of the police 
force had violated a lawful order and regula- 
tion promulgated by the Commissioner, for- 
bidding affiliation with outside organizations. 
The Commissioner proceeded in lawful course 
to enforce this regulation by formal trial of 
those who had violated its provisions. The 
obvious, inevitable, and expected adjudication 
of their guilt, excited a sympathetic breach of 
duty by their fellows, resulting in a secretly 
organized desertion of their posts, and the 
immediate, but brief outburst of lawlessness 
and violence, which, for a time, the remaining 
loyal police force was unable to wholly sup- 
press. Supported by a universal approving 
sentiment of the people of the Commonwealth, 
the military forces of the State were immedi- 
ately and lawfully called into service by the 
Mayor and the Governor, and instantly order 
was restored; and save for some isolated traces 
of a night of lawlessness, and the presence of 
militia men in the streets of Boston, the affairs 
of the City proceeded in normal course, while 



THE TWO ALLIES 91 

the depleted police force was in process of re- 
organization. 

"The Governor did not intervene, prior to 
the exercise of his constitutional authority in 
calling the military arm of the public service 
into action, nor did he till then assume to in 
any wise advise or direct the Commissioner in 
the discharge of the duties of his own office as 
defined by the statute. The Commissioner was 
called upon to face, as he did, alone and with 
full realization of its grave issue, the emer- 
gency that confronted him. He knew that only 
through the unfaltering enforcement of the 
lawful requirements of the service that he had 
established and must control, could he main- 
tain the efficiency or the vital morale of the 
police force in the maintenance of the law, and 
the protection of the city which he had swoni 
to preserve. Undeterred by threats, unaffected 
by solicitations and timorous suggestions of 
compromise with the offenders who had be- 
trayed their trust, he maintained his steadfast 
course, universally approved by the people of 
the Commonwealth, who had discerned that the 
issue was the survival or destruction of the 
State itself. 



92 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

"When, and perhaps when first he could 
intervene, the Governor did so, exercising his 
own supreme authority under the law, super- 
ceding the assumption by the Mayor of a sup- 
posed authority to take over command of the 
Police Department. The Governor directed the 
Commissioner to act only under such direc- 
tion as the State executive might prescribe, and 
meanwhile to conduct his administration of the 
Police Department in accordance with his own 
vested authority, and thereafter no further order 
or direction was communicated by the Governor 
to the Commissioner. 

"Thence forward, as before, Mr. Curtis di- 
rected and conducted the affairs of his office, 
exercised its every authority under the law in 
his own sound discretion, and in resolute per- 
formance of his duty. Had he faltered, had he, 
seduced or persuaded by insidious suggestions 
of compromise, yielded and given over the con- 
trol of the city to those who had allied them- 
selves with the evil doers who had betrayed 
their pledge of service and had sought to gain 
their own ends, by surrendering the city de- 
prived of their protection to the terrors of the 
mob; had the Commissioner, in fear, or misled 



THE TWO ALLIES 93 

by the panic-stricken appeals of would-be ad- 
visers, opened the gates of the citadel to its 
invaders; upon what walls or towers could the 
Governor have raised the standard of the 
authority of the law, emblazoned with his own 
matchless phrases proclaiming its supremacy? 
"There need be no discussion as to the com- 
parative distinction in exalted public service 
between the Governor and the Police Commis- 
sioner. Without either the great issue would 
have passed, unrecognized, as one of the most 
momentous incidents in the history of the State 

or Nation. 

"Mr. Curtis alone in the forefront of battle 
held his lines unbroken till victory was attained. 

"The Governor, instantly responding to the 
call of a great occasion, which he at once per- 
ceived, with consummate sagacity, with cour- 
age and determination of supreme quality, 
marshalled all the forces of the Commonwealth 
to make the institutions of our law secure and 
impregnable for all time against further assault, 
by treachery or violence. No other chief magis- 
trate has been gifted as he to touch and inspire 
by both appeal and command the patriotic faith 
of his people. Only his own faith, his senti- 
ment and marvelous power of expression could 



94 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

have stirred, as he did, the people of Massachu- 
setts and the nation itself to a recognition and 
renewal of their pledge and service to the tri- 
umphant maintenance of our law, inviolate, un- 
moved, whether assaulted by its enemies within 
or without our borders. 

"Vigilant, deliberate, with inflexible courage, 
the chief magistrate suffered no incident of the 
impending crisis to escape his forecasting con- 
sideration. He waited the just and appropriate 
moment for his action, and then, with full force 
of lawful authority and with overwhelming 
weight of the people's will behind him, he struck, 
and, with supreme mastery of the event, stood 
revealed as a true leader of men, of patriotism, 
courage and wisdom, proven through the trial of 
faith and of conflict. 

"He will meet, again, undaunted, with clear 
vision and with the sure confidence of his coun- 
trymen, the grave crises that may attend his de- 
voted service in the highest field of endeavor 
upon which man may enter, and to which he has 
been called by the decree of tragic fate." 

The Boston police strike of September, 1919, 
made Calvin Coolidge known throughout the 
country as the apostle of law and order. It gave 
him an issue and an opportunity. It hurried 



THE TWO ALLIES 95 

him into the Vice-Presidency. The importance 
of this issue is fully recognized only by those 
who lived in that city at that time, which, when 
the police deserted their posts was open to the 
possibilities of the mob. Boston only can under- 
stand that type of helplessness. Such an issue, 
or any issue, history is only too quick to forget. 
The risks of life dwarf as they pass backwards, 
for joy that a man is born into the world. They 
are greatest when faced. The English jockey as 
he turns into the stretch before the crowds and 
the cheers and the music, hanging over the 
withers of his thoroughbred, forgets the hurdle 
he has topped and fastens his eyes only on the 
hurdle that is before him, which he seeks safely 
to negotiate, and which alone stands between the 
blue ribbon and himself. 

The Boston police strike, its issue and its de- 
termination by the Police Commissioner and by 
the Governor, ought to grow in realization and 
recognition with each passing hour. It is sig- 
nificant that steps which had begun in other 
parts of the country for the unionizing of the 
police were then abandoned. The issue died. 
It was a great issue. It was greatly met. 
Render therefore unto the Caesars the 
things which are theirs. 



CHAPTER VIII 

A Profile 

"Seest thou a man diligent in his busi- 
ness, he shall stand before KingsJ' 

The country has probably never seen a man 
prominent in public life like him. No one 
thinks of opposing him and his great strength 
has come to him, he has not gone to it. He has 
never been known to make the usual moves 
towards political preferment. Most men im- 
press one with trying to shape their own political 
fortunes, he appears indifferent. He has been 
content to rest his political hopes, if he has had 
any, on the political duties he has had to per- 
form, however humble. The great reason for 
his political success is his own personality 
which appeals to one not for what it appears to 
be but for what it is. Unlike most politicians, 
he does not play a part, he is himself. He 
moves quietly and efficiently. He talks only 
when he has something to say but he listens 
respectfully whether there is something to hear 

96 




FOR HETTEl? FOR WORSE 



A PROFILE 97 

or not. He has humor. He can make a pleas- 
antry and enjoy a pleasantry but he does not 
use humor only to make for others amusement 
or for himself votes. A nod from him upon the 
street is better than an ebullition from another 
and even this is unnecessary for he is known to 
be a democrat. He has come surely. 

He has uncommon sense. He is 
always in preparation. 

In his first year in the Massachusetts House in 
1907 he was not regarded as a leader because 
he had not been in political life long enough to 
be known. Things went after him. He did not 
go after them. In his second year in the State 
Senate in 1913, when he was Chairman of the 
important Committee on Railroads, he was a 
Chairman who presided; a man who made only 
the necessary motions of mind, mouth or of 
body. He never writes when he can talk, and he 
never talks when he can nod. He was never 
opposed, personally; he has no enemies in the 
usual sense. Few men have fewer critics. He 
had as intelligent and as detailed a knowledge 
of the bills he had to pass on as any man in the 
State House. He sees only one side of a ques- 



98 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

tion, its merits. He has shown independence as 
a legislator and 

is as quick to stand by the weak when 

they are right as to leave power when 

it is wrong. 

He has had as little newspaper notice as any 
man of his prominence. This has been because 
he has avoided it. His speeches are unique and 
strong for their thought and for their epigram- 
matic brevity. His political strength is largely 
because the public have been curious to study 
the personality of the only man of that kind 
they have seen. The more of the man they 
studied, the more of a man they found. He has 
a maximum of business, a minimum of froth. 
He has patience, tenacity, and self-control, 
qualities which enable one to stand before 
kings. As Lieutenant-Governor and as Vice- 
President he was loyal to his Chiefs to a 
degree too seldom found among his predeces- 
sors. His life has enabled him to know and to 
understand all sorts of men, for he has been of 
them. These men made him Governor, for they 
liked him for his originality, his modesty, his 
democracy and his ability. Most men are con- 



A PROFILE 99 

tent to be honored by the office they seek. He 
gives a dignity to the many high honors which 
have seemed naturally to come to him. He is 
more of an asset to public office than public 
office is an asset to him. He is a character ex- 
ceeded by none in interest for study, still incom- 
plete, probably always incomplete. He has the 
charm of mystery which puzzles and appeals. 
When, pursuant to a fine tradition, in early 
January 1919, the cannon upon the Common 
proclaimed to the people of Massachusetts that 
the hills of her sister State, Vermont, had given 
them a chief executive, those who would learn 
to live knew that merit and fortune sometimes 
walk hand in hand and that the Commonwealth 
had again the sort of Governor she ought to 
have, measuring up to her high ideals. 

An issue hurried him into the Vice-Presidency. 
Greater responsibilities stimulate further analy- 
sis. He is a student of political economy. As 
a servant of the people he is as careful of his 
official as he is of his personal expenditures. 
To him the public and the private pocket in this 
way are the same. He is a student of philosophy. 
He is led by logic and not by emotion, 
by fidelity and not by ambition. 



100 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

He supplements leadership with cooperation. 
He sets his compass not only for today but also 
for tomorrow and for a course beyond the line 
of the horizon. Those who study him, know 
him, turn to him, rely on him. They, only, know 
him, for his virtues he does not radio. The peo- 
ple see in him one of their own. The powerful 
turn to him because he is an intellectual aristo- 
crat and the weak because he is also a plain 
farmer. He is one of them all. He met the 
great issue, law and order. He recognizes that 
law is but the will of the people which he suc- 
cessfully sets out to arouse. He has the strength 
of a deep running river, powerful and placid. 
He has an inset religious faith. 

Of such is Calvin Coolidge. He has made his 
five talents ten. Providence has led him on, 
made strong allies his handmaidens, made his 
path straight. Law and order revealed him into 
the Vice-Presidency. 

He noiv holds the highest office on 

earth by virtue of a title greater than 

that of any electorate. God made him 

President. 




W(,rlil Wide Photos 

THE THREE ( (K)LIUGE MEN. WASHINGTON 



Calvin Coolidge, Jr. 



The President John Coolidge 



CHAPTER IX 
Along the Potomac 

*'God moves in a mysterious way, 
His wonders to perform.^^ 

Particularly because of the issue, law and 
order, it was natural that when the Presidential 
storm of 1920 broke and men were named for 
the Republican Presidential nomination, the 
Governor was among them. Significantly, how- 
ever, some of the Republican leaders of his own 
State sulked in their tents. They were then 
without a gift of prophecy which they now 
lament. A determined effort was made to secure 
for Leonard Wood the Massachusetts delegation. 
The Governor, however, continued with his 
duties in his own way, unrippled. When asked 
if he were a candidate for the Presidency, he 
said: 

"/ am not a candidate for the Presi- 
dency, I am Governor of Massachu- 
setts and am content to do my only 
duty, the days work as such.'' 
101 



102 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

Again, in a characteristic whimsical vein, he 
said: "If you are asked if I am a candidate 
for the Presidency, tell the truth." 

Coolidge had been reelected Governor in the 
fall of 1919 on the issue of law and order by 
the greatest vote to that time cast, which was 
before women voted. In the spirit of these 
statements he finished the old term and began 
the new. In the Republican State Convention of 
1919, strangely, there was some discussion over 
the plank on The League of Nations, then the 
great issue. The matter was compromised in a 
way which met with satisfaction. The party how- 
ever, should have stood without hesitation to the 
letter logically behind Senator Lodge and his 
position because his record was the party rec- 
ord. He was the party. He had made it what it 
was, whether it was good, whether it was bad. 

The Coolidge sentiment for President in the 
spring of 1920 began to grow. He, however, 
did nothing to encourage it. It was not his way. 
He was content to do the day's work. 

Headquarters which ardent friends 

had opened for him in Washington he 

closed. 



ALONG THE POTOMAC 103 

He was content to drift along in tlie Coolidge 
current which he had always found to be a 
strong tide. He knew that he lay in an advan- 
tageous position on the political beach, to be 
washed safely high on the shore. He knew that 
his cause was strongest as an harmonizing sug- 
gestion should the convention fail to nominate, 
otherwise. His cause was thus unscarred by 
contest. It was his way. His book, "Have 
Faith in Massachusetts," was widely circulated 
by his friends throughout the country by which 
he became better known. The story is told that 
a young woman went into an ill-equipped coun- 
try store in Berkshire County and asked: "Have 
you faith in Massachusetts?" The answer was 

"Yes" and "No." 

A notable delegation, in quality if not m 
quantity, went to Chicago in June for Coolidge. 
They had taken the bits into their own mouths 
and would not be controlled by him. Notable 
among them were then Lieutenant-Governor 
Channing Cox, then Speaker Joseph Everett 
Warner and the Hon. Benjamin Loring Young, 
then reconciled to political preferment. Al- 
though they recognized that advancement for 
Coolidge and his retirement as Governor meant 



104 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

probable advancement for them, this did not 
palsy their hands or chill the inside of their 
footgear. No one at Chicago was more elo- 
quent for Calvin Coolidge than they. 

Their devotion and self-effacement is 

one of the most touching and noblest 

pages in the political history of the 

Commonwealth. 

There were others. The Hon. Charles L. 
Burrill is a man of independence and vigor. He 
is not in need of a tonic. When he is with you, 
he is with you. He is now a Councillor, then 
State Treasurer. He has a creditable public 
record. Thomas W. White was a legislative col- 
league of Coolidge. Tom knew him. Coolidge 
had made him Supervisor of Administration, the 
most important office in the State House. White 
is a politician. A splendid quality of his as 
such is that he recognizes the obligation of reci- 
procity. This he cheerfully then did. William 
F. Whiting of Holyoke is a member of a family 
distinguished as manufacturers. These names 
stand high on the roll of honor of those loyal to 
Calvin Coolidge, not alone in 1923 when it is 



ALONG THE POTOMAC 105 

easy, but particularly in 1920, when it was not 
so easy. 

Louis K. Liggett, a successful, respected man- 
ufacturer and retailer of drugs in Boston, was 
another leader in the Coolidge delegation. In 
his zeal, the story is told, that he invaded even 
the boudoir of the Senior Senator from Massa- 
chusetts, when the clock had fought its course 
half-way from caviar to shredded wheat, seek- 
ing to enlist him in his army. A Cabot was 
actually in bed. A Cabot never goes to bed 
except perhaps furtively outside of Suffolk and 
Essex Counties. He retires. "Senator," cried he, 
when he had hardly closed the door, removed his 
hat and gums, and a Cabot turning, had faced 
him, "Calvin Coolidge is the greatest man in 
this country since the days of Abraham Lin- 
coln." The Senior Senator made an effort to 
control himself long enough to reply: "Will you 
kindly repeat, that is, the fifth word?" When 
Henry Cabot Lodge had satisfied himself that 
he had again heard the word, "greatest," he 
turned languidly on his right side, facing the 
wall, and reached for a soothing powder. His 
forefinger hesitated at the push button which 
hung over the bed to plunge the room in dark- 



106 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

ness only because of the obligation of a host, to 
which a Cabot could not be dead. Calvin 
Coolidge was placed before the convention for 
President by the Speaker of the House, the Hon. 
Frederick Huntington Gillett. He is a son of 
Westfield, loyal to Calvin Coolidge, not only 
now but also then, and of the Connecticut River 
Valley, though well up on its western banks 
beyond the reach of its highest tides. The nomi- 
nation was seconded by Mrs. Alexandra Car- 
lisle in an eloquent speech. Women then made 
their political debut in her. On the first ballot, 
Coolidge received 34 votes, including 1 from 
Kentucky, 2 from New York, 2 from South 
Carolina, 1 from Texas and 28 of the 35 Massa- 
chusetts delegates. Massachusetts had been 
hammered hard for Leonard Wood for six 
months. Coolidge had done nothing, and his 
adherents had been strangled by him so far as 
he was able to do so. And yet, seven only fal- 
tered. Curiously, Vermont's 8 votes went to 
Leonard Wood for President but for Coolidge 
for Vice-President, on the first ballots. 

The Governor was nominated for the Vice- 
Presidency at Chicago, June 12, 1920, at nine in 
the evening by the Hon. Wallace MacCamant of 



ALONG THE POTOMAC 107 

Portland, Oregon. It was enough to mention his 
name to the convention and it swept with a spon- 
taneity unexcelled in history. When the news 
came to him at The Adams House in Boston, 
where he was then living as Governor, he stood 
at the telephone. He turned to his wife and 
said, simply: 

"Nominated.^' 

He was as much Coolidge as when he heard that 
he had been first politically uncrated and elected 
a Councilman in Northampton in 1899. His 
wife, Grace Goodhue Coolidge, could, would 
and did betray human joy. The humblest serf 
of the hotel, as he hurried up purely Volstedian 
beverages to his adherents, was more exuberant 
than the Governor and quicker to betray it. 
Frank Stearns, who always aimed at the stars 
for Coolidge, looked upon the Vice-Presidency 
as a bauble. He contemplated retiring into a 
monastery. Coolidge was formally notified of 
his nomination at Northampton, July 27, 1920. 
On that day. Senator Crane, one of the Gover- 
nor's most sympathetic allies, showed signs of 
his final illness. He was loved because he lived: 
"It is more blessed to give than to receive." 



108 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

He gave to those in trouble freely of his money 
but more than this freely of his time. No poli- 
tician was closer to Calvin Coolidge than 

Murray Crane, who drew all men to 
him with hooks of steel. 

To his place, the Hon. William M. Butler has 
now succeeded. He stood closest to Crane. He 
has won the respect of the people by his fore- 
sight and thrift. 

In the campaign which then began the 
Governor made a number of political speeches 
throughout the country which were of great 
value to the ticket, although he was handicapped 
by his onerous duties as Governor. These he 
carefully prepared, for no one is less given 
than he to extempore speaking. These speeches 
he wrote out in long hand before they were 
typed, as he does with all his speeches. He was 
particularly successful among the farmers of 
the West, for he had always been a farmer him- 
self. When he saw a plough, he knew it. In 
November, the ticket was elected by the greatest 
plurality known in history. 

January and February 1921 were welcome 
days of comparative rest for Calvin Coolidge. 



ALONG THE POTOMAC 109 

He had retired as Governor and had returned to 
"The Executive Mansion" in Northampton. 
There with his wife, and the boys at study in the 
public schools of the town, he was happier than 
he had been for years or was to be, for he likes 
simplicity and the opportunity for study. For 
the first time since the year 1909, the year 
between his service as Representative and as 
Mayor, he was in private life. He had become 
the most distinguished son of the Connecticut 
River Valley in its history. 

Coolidge found much correspondence to keep 
him busy and he was preparing for his duties in 
the United States Senate as he always prepared. 
The letters which came into Northampton for 
him, and the post office became a busy one, were 
longer naturally than those that went out. The 
incoming and not the outgoing was the big mail. 
To one loyal friend, then under attack, who 
wrote him a real letter, congratulating the coun- 
try on his elevation, Coolidge wrote simply: 

''Thanks. Matt. 5:10, 11. C. C." 

He was never in finer form as Calvin the Silent, 
for he denied the letter even a date. On August 
3, 1923, this letter was framed and deposited in 



no CALVIN COOLIDGE 

a safe deposit vault, and not in a trunk, backed, 
"Correspondence, Calvin Coolidge." Strangely, 
some few critics look upon a man who has twice 
been President of the Massachusetts Senate, 
three times Lieutenant-Governor, and twice Gov- 
ernor, with suspicion. They suggest in substance 
that in politics, in stature, he is a Tom Thumb, 
and in his success, a casualty. 

Massachusetts is a fairly intelligent 
State and is not in the habit of digest- 
ing for seven long years a peppered 
chocolate. 

On March 4, 1921, Coolidge became Vice- 
President and by virtue of his office presided 
over the Senate of the United States. He was 
then forty-eight years old, one year for each star 
in the flag. The seat in which he sat quietly, 
Roosevelt had writhed in. Strangely, he had 
turned from swinging the gavel over the Massa- 
chusetts Senate and the Hon. George Bosworth 
Churchill, also a great son of Amherst, to that of 
maintaining order over her great sister and 
Hiram Johnson. The Presidency has saved him 
from Magnus. He was asked to sit in the Cabi- 
net of the President. He was the first Vice- 



ALONG THE POTOMAC 111 

President to face a proposition of this delicacy, 
for The White House and The Senate had not 
always been a symbol of sympathetic commun- 
ion. This he did with great tact and profit to the 
country then and later. 

He lived with his wife at The New Willard and 
with his boys when they were not at school or at 
the top of the Washington Monument. He pur- 
sued his duties quietly and efficiently as always 
nor did he immediately seek to ally himself 
with a press agency or subscribe to a clipping 
bureau. It is not his first hope for the day, that 
of most public servants restless for advance, to 
read about himself, praise or even condemna- 
tion. There is no easier way to jeopardize an 
appetite for breakfast. He also faced other 
hurdles, harder for one of his tastes if this word 
may be properly used, the continuous dinners 
which the Vice-President is paid his salary to eat. 
Fortunately, The New Willard is maintained 
on the European plan. Calvin paid for what he 
ate only, and more than this he ate what he 
paid for. Entertained often at luncheon at 
noon by some Senator who hoped to be recog- 
nized by The Chair later in the day and dining 
at some Embassy in the evening, Calvin's board 



112 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

bill at the hotel could have easily been paid by 
a parish priest. It is a matter of regret though 
not of surprise to those who know our hero, 
that, whether he ate much or ate little, he ate 
more than he talked but less than he listened. 
At one of these dinners, a Washington matron 
sat beside him. She established herself then 
and there as a raconteur of high order for there 
also sat beside her Herbert Hoover. Hers was 
an admirable background against which she was 
set off. Her heart set on the biggest game within 
her reach, she forgot the man who fed the Bel- 
gians and concentrated her ingenuity on Calvin, 
to tempt him to speak. He was noticed address- 
ing her almost excitedly. When later she was 
asked for the cause of her great triumph, she 
replied: 

"/ did not make much progress with 

him until I reached the Northampton 

post office."" 

Here again this little anecdote is significant, 
for Coolidge is preoccupied always with great 
questions and when he found that he could work 
his mouth and rest his mind on a familiar theme, 
then he was ready to cooperate and happy. 



ALONG THE POTOMAC 113 

A prominent man in Washington, a good judge 
of men and a loyal friend of the President, says: 
"I like him because I don't know why I like 
him; because he don't seem to care whether I 
like him or not; because he's the only one of 
his species, which I didn't know existed; be- 
cause he's not like other politicians, doesn't 
give away cigars, kiss other babies than his own 
or tell entertaining stories; because he gets by 
on merit, not personal charm, because to him a 
political job is a business opportunity; because, 
in easy English, he F, 0. B's the freight." 

Of such was the life of Calvin Coolidge in 
Washington. More than this, when he was not 
there or at home on the farm, he was speaking 
for the administration throughout the country. 

No one exceeded him in his loyalty to 
Warren Harding and his administra- 
tion. 

At midnight after the day of August 2, a 
motor and messengers hurried over the rough 
road from Ludlow to Plymouth. They carried 
a message of great sorrow and of high responsi- 
bility. The President was dead. In a white 
cottage close by the highway, Calvin Coolidge 



114 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

slept. From peace and simplicity and the 
homely duties and pleasures about the farm, he 
was aroused to face the high office of President. 
No man has passed through a greater transition 
than that of the loyal aide-de-camp and friend 
of Warren Gamaliel Harding. 

Never has greater distinction and 
greater power come to any one among 
more simple surroundings. It is a 
symbol of the democracy of American 
institutions which will always live in 
American history ^ that opportunity 
and honor are open to all. 

The little white cottage will never die. It staged 
a drama which will forever thrill every Ameri- 
can citizen, from the powerful to the plough- 
man. 

In his great hour, Calvin Coolidge thought 
first of his father. It was he who as Notary 
Public administered to his son the oath of office 
at seventeen minutes of three in the morning, 
eastern standard time, in these words: "I, Cal- 
vin Coolidge, do solemnly swear that I will 
faithfully execute the office of President of the 
United States, and that I will, to the best of 



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ALONG THE POTOMAC 115 

my ability, preserve, protect and defend the 
constitution of the United States. So help me 
God." The only other words said were by the 
President: "Grace, get another lamp." And 
there was light. Calvin Coolidge became Presi- 
dent of the United States. When the great test 
came, official and personal, he showed the stoi- 
cism of an Indian. He was himself. 

In his first words to the American people, the 
President said: 

"Reports have reached me, which I fear are 
correct, that President Harding has gone. The 
world has lost a great and good man. I mourn 
his loss. He was my chief and my friend. It 
will be my privilege to carry out the policies 
which he has begun for the service of the Ameri- 
can people and for me to meet their responsi- 
bilities whenever they may arise. For this pur- 
pose I shall seek the cooperation of all those 
who have been associated with the President 
during his term of office. Those who have given 
their efforts to assist him, I wish to remain in 
office, that they may assist me. I have faith that 
God will direct the destinies of our nation." 

In his first act as President, he stood alone at 
his mother's grave in Plymouth, for which he 



116 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

halted his progress to Washington. He was 
true to those scriptural words, the only com- 
mandment with promise: 

'^Honour thy father and mother." 

Mention is now reserved here for one who 
is now dead, on August 2, 1923, and who by 
his characteristic, kindly and wise foresight did 
much to adapt at the Cabinet table Calvin 
Coolidge for his responsibilities as President. 

Warren Harding as a man was a Christian 
gentleman. His was a faith which compre- 
hended all, Protestant and Catholic, Gentile and 
Jew, who recognized in him a spiritual aristo- 
crat. In his death the people forgot the Presi- 
dent for the man, for his personal charm could 
not be augmented by the splendor of any office, 
even the high one which he held. This they 
showed at his death in expressions of sorrow and 
respect unprecedented, marked first by silence 
and second by numbers, the great and the small, 
the young and the old, the strong and the weak. 
His Christian qualities are best shown upon the 
walls of The Marion Star by this, his newspaper 
creed : 

"Remember there are two sides to every 



ALONG THE POTOMAC 117 

question. Get both. Be truthful. Get the facts. 
Mistakes are inevitable, but strive for accuracy. 
I would rather have one story exactly right than 
a hundred half wrong. Be decent. Be fair. 
Be generous. Boost — don't knock. There's 
good in everybody. Bring out the good in 
everybody, and never needlessly hurt the feel- 
ing of anybody. In reporting a political gath- 
ering, get the facts, tell the story as it is, not as 
you would like to have it. Treat all parties 
alike. If there's any politics to be played, we 
will play it in our editorial columns. Treat all 
religious matter reverently. If it can possibly 
be avoided, never bring ignominy to an innocent 
woman or child in telling of the misdeeds or 
misfortune of a relative. Don't wait to be asked, 
but do it without the asking. 

And above all be clean. Never let a 
dirty word or suggestive story get into 
type. I want this paper so conducted 
thai it can go into any home without 
destroying the innocence of any child." 

Warren Harding as President remembered 
his country. He forgot himself and his own 
life. He lost his life. He has found it. He fore- 



118 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

saw the stake which he did not seek to evade, 
for he was not in sound physical condition. He 
was a patriot. He came into the office of Presi- 
dent at a period trying for the country, trying 
for him. It was a period of reconstruction, 
restlessness, when the people were impatient and 
quick in comment and criticism. He was led, 
not by ambition, but by duty. He had a kindly 
heart and an unwillingness to pain. He had 
sound sense. He had courage. He had fidelity. 
He did not shrink from bristling issues even 
where the leaders of his own party were divided. 
He was insistent for the enforcement of the law 
and the respect of the constitution. The Dis- 
armament Conference for the peace of the 
world, called by him, was his first great hope. 
He will live in history not only as a great Peace 
President, none greater, but more than this as a 
Christian gentleman. 

'"The strenuous day is past. 
The march, the fight. 
The bugle sounds at last: 
Lights out. Good night." 

Warren Harding is dead. The Presidency of 
the United States, no higher, more honorable or 



ALONG THE POTOMAC 119 

more powerful office on earth, never dies. 
Calvin Coolidge succeeds to the command. 

"Close up the ranks. March on." 

To the people of the United States remains 
the high duty: 

Have faith in Calvin Coolidge. 



CHAPTER X 
Some High Tides 

"Let reverence of the law be 
breathed by every mother to the 
lisping babe that prattles on her lap; 
let it be taught in schools, seminaries 
and colleges; let it be written in 
primers, spelling books and alma- 
nacs; let it be preached from pulpits 
and proclaimed in legislative halls 
and enforced in courts of justice; let 
it become the political religion 
of the nation." — Lincoln. 

On the Power of Religion 
C. C. 

"It was because religion gave the people a 
new importance and a new glory that they 
demanded a new freedom and a new Govern- 
ment. We cannot in our generation reject the 
cause and retain the result. If the institutions 
they adopted are to survive, if the Government 
which they founded is to endure, it will be 

120 



SOME HIGH TIDES 121 

because the people continue to have similar 
religious beliefs. It is idle to discuss free- 
dom and equality on any other basis. It is 
useless to expect substantial reforms from any 
other motive. They cannot be administered 
from without. They must come from within." 

On the American Revolution 
'94-'9S-C. C. 

"When history looks beyond the immediate 
causes of the American Revolution for the 
justifying principles, it is very soon brought 
back to the spirit of English liberty. It is the 
same genius for freedom that has led the race 
from the primeval forests of Germany to the 
thirteenth amendment to the constitution. 

"Such an honorable antiquity of political 
ideas has made the race very conservative of 
self-government. The idea is prehistoric. . . . 
Although it is characteristic of Englishmen to 
have great love for a king so long as he respects 
the liberties of the people, yet the fact that 
they drove out one king; rebelled against two; 
and executed three shows clearly enough that 
there was always a strong idea of the divine 
right of the people as well as of kings. Prece- 



122 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

dents, then, are by no means wanting among 
Englishmen for the successful resistance of 
arbitrary despotism whenever it encroached 
upon their liberties. 

"Another fact that must be noted is the char- 
acter of the colonists, and especially those of 
Massachusetts. These were the Puritans who 
had fought the wars of liberty in England. . . . 
Of all the race they were the most tenacious 
of their rights and the most jealous of their 
liberties. 

"The American Revolution was not, then, 
any struggle for emancipation from slavery; 
the colonists were free men. Nor was it at 
first so much for gaining new liberties as pre- 
serving the old. Nor can it, as is often thought, 
be called a war between different nations. 

"Both sides were Englishmen who gloried in 
the name of England. . . . The ablest advo- 
cates of the colonial cause were members of 
Parliament, while the most ardent advocates of 
the king were colonists. The real object of 
resistance was to gain security from parliamen- 
tary encroachments. This was the chief cause 
for which the revolutionists contended, but by 
no means all they attained . . . the war was a 



SOME HIGH TIDES 123 

struggle for the retention of those institutions 
that check oppression and violence. 

"The colonists were . . . struggling to 
change the foundation of government from 
force to equality. . . . Great Britain had re- 
course to acts of coercion. . . . Free govern- 
ment was destroyed. . . . Town meetings were 
forbidden. . . . The form of government that 
was thrust on Massachusetts was despotism such 
as Englishmen would not have endured, even 
in the days of Henry VIII. 

"Though the injustice of taxation without 
representation made a good war cry ... it 
is, in the last analysis, a dangerous principle. 
. . . The fact is, it is a duty to the State to 
pay taxes, and it is equally a duty to vote. It 
does not follow that because the State requires 
one duty it shall require the other. 

"It cannot be, then, that the American Revo- 
lution was fought that colonists might escape 
paying taxes. . . . The real principle was 
not one of the right of the State or the duty of 
citizens. It was a question of government, a 
question of form and method. ... It was not 
so much a revolution, a propagation of new 
ideas, as the maintenance of the old forms of 



124 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

a representative government, of chartered rights 
and constitutional liberty. England had fought 
for this in 1688, and imagined it was secured. 
But it was only so in name. . . . 

"Sovereignty is always finally vested in the 
people. . . . England had asserted it against 
the Stuarts, but George III forgot it. . . . The 
colonies were driven to assert by war what the 
Commons of England partially gained by legis- 
lation sixty years later. There was further 
gained in the United States a recognition that 
quality, not quantity, is the basis of the peer- 
age of man, and accordingly all men were de- 
clared free and equal. 

"Still there is another factor that must in- 
evitably have led to separation. The great land 
of America had a part to play in the history 
of the world that could best be performed by 
making it an independent nation. England's 
great work was to plant colonies. America 
could not aid in that work. It was her place 
to found a great nation on this side of the 
Atlantic and to bring out the conception of 
free government. And when this was done, 
then America stretched out her hand over the 
sea to aid the oppressed of Europe, to furnish 



SOME HIGH TIDES 125 

them a place of refuge, and, as soon as they 
could assume the duties, make them citizens, 
not alone of our United States, but of the 
world." 

On Wit 

Grove Oration — Amherst College — 
June, 1895, by "J. Calvin Coolidge" 

"The mantle of truth falls upon the Grove 
Orator on condition he wear it wrong side out. 
For the Grove Oration is intended to give a 
glimpse of the only true side of college life 
— the inside. And how can this be displayed 
but by turning things wrong side out? That is 
the grove prerogative. We came out of doors 
to have plenty of room. Reconstructed Amherst 
has not yet decreed that "fools may not speak 
wisely what wise men do foolishly." Yet let 
no one expect that this is an occasion for feed- 
ing the multitude — on small fishes. I only 
bring the impressions that we gather by the 
way, whether they be pleasant as the breath of 
society roses from over the meadows of Old 
Hadley, or disagreeable as the ancient odors 
that filled Athenae Hall. 

"Now college life has three relations — the 



126 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

relation to the class, the relation to the faculty, 
and the relation to other things. The class 
relation begins with a cane rush where the 
undergraduates use Anglo-Saxon, and ends with 
a diploma where the faculty use Latin — if it 
does not end before by a communication from 
the President in just plain English. When we 
had our first rush the streets of Amherst were 
lit with matches. We lost the rush, but we 
found our class spirit. Those were the days 
when we looked with envy at even Professor 
Charlie, and cooled our fevered brows at the 
college well. Let memory draw us back once 
more to the college well! Deep as the wily 
schemes of "Sleuth" Jaggar, the crafty man, 
cool as the impudence of "Jeff" Davis, refresh- 
ing as the sparkling wit of "Chipmunk" Hardy! 
The freshman's first love! Many a man goes 
home when he finds the college well is not dug 
in Northampton. 

"But sophomore year came at last. Probably 
nearly every one would maintain that the only 
proper thing to do when one comes to a descrip- 
tion of sophomore year is to let the voice fall, 
count four, and begin some other subject. In 
fact, I have always been inclined to believe that 



SOME HIGH TIDES 127 

some impecunious sophomore, who may have 
enticed him into buying a book on ornithology 
or some kindred subject, first led Horace 
Greeley to classify college men as horned cattle. 

"But the great editor was a poor naturalist, 
for even horned cattle would never try to steal 
a railroad restaurant. Still we have to excuse 
the sophomore worm, for he comes out of his 
vacation cocoon a junior butterfly. Probably 
it is better to be a junior than not to be. He 
is the incarnation of all the attributes of a 
college man. The plug hat is his. He goes 
about "seeking the bubble reputation even in 
his own mouth." Only last Decoration Day, 
Lockwood delivered two addresses before peo- 
ple. The only trouble with junior year is that 
it leaves one a senior. He needs no description. 
You have all been looking at him for the last 
week. Here are some living pictures repre- 
senting the senior in repose. 

"There is connected with our Christian College 
an institution of most honorable antiquity called 
a faculty. Some of its members, like comets 
with long hair, move in orbits of enormous 
eccentricity. Some seem but satellites revolving 
around that "tenebrific star" that "did ray out 



128 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

darkness" over the Amherst system. "All the 
world's a stage, ... all men . . . merely 
players . . . and one man in his time plays 
many parts." But there are others. At the 
head of one of the best departments in College 
is Professor Frink. One man in the class 
allowed him to be mentioned on several pages 
of our Olio. That man had to send his regrets 
to the class supper from a distant city. But 
still the professor was not satisfied with our 
production, and even expressed himself in terms 
that were derogatory to its literary merit. It 
has been said that DeQuincey was a creature 
of the intellect. But though we would refuse 
to offer the excuse of Mother Eve that this 
serpent beguiled us, still the Board and the 
class behind it is willing to fall back upon the 
excuse of the late Adam that this woman gave 
to us and we did eat. He has indeed furnished 
us with fruit. There is a four years' course, 
too, under Dr. Hitchcock. "The poor ye have 
always with you." But not feeling at liberty 
to make use of the choice indecencies that are 
always so prevalent in the remarks of the ven- 
erable tarrier, it is necessary to refer him to 
Mr. Kelley. Was he the only member of the 



SOME HIGH TIDES 129 

faculty that was eminently fitted to hear Egan's 
apology for talking French at the sophomore 
supper, or had Egan infringed upon the domain 
of the physical department? I recommend the 
Olio Board to compile statistics showing the 
original sources of Dr. Tuttle's stories, and the 
number of times he uses his favorite phrase 
the "pierced hand." There are some who argue 
that what the good Doctor took for a call to 
the pulpit was in reality some other noise. But 
your grove orator does not think so, though it 
may have been a subjective sensation. The only 
professor who seems positively disappointed 
when a man does not flunk is Professor Wood. 
But some men do disappoint him. To a man 
standing at the back of his class it must resemble 
the circuit races. Then there is the new labora- 
tory, where Professor Harris delights to lecture 
upon various, diverse, promiscuous and other 
oratorical subjects, except chemistry. He has 
a lecture on the faculty in two sub-divisions 
— Christians and gorillas — that actually sur- 
passes the ordinary effort of a superintendent of 
schools. To a man who does not take geology 
Professor Emerson looks like a kind old gen- 
tleman with a little of the good free wool 



130 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

growing on his countenance; but the combined 
vocabularies of Kingsland and Sampson could 
not express the mind of a man trying to make 
up a cut in that department. Professor Neill 
seems to be trying to color himself with nico- 
tine like a meerschaum pipe. He has partially 
succeeded with his whiskers. To attain perfec- 
tion he needs to send himself away, and get 
himself boiled. Then if he came back at all 
he would come back a nice dark brown. But 
these are only a few snapshots from the side 
lines. In such departments as calculus, his- 
tory, philosophy and many others, are men who 
teach. It is such men that have made Amherst 
what it is. I believe every Amherst man may 
point with pride at our faculty. 

"I have said that there are other things. One 
of these is the town. It is largely made up 
of beautiful scenery and a kindly regard for 
a college man's money. But not so with all the 
townspeople. James Davis deserves a word of 
commendation, but I cannot give it to him, be- 
cause he sent me word that whenever he was 
mentioned in this connection his wife made 
home life a misery to him. It seemed also at 
the opening of the year as if it would be neces- 



SOME HIGH TIDES 131 

sary to mention The Student, but ever since 
Editor Law came back from Christmas vaca- 
tion, wearing an engagement smile, and hum- 
ming some ditty about "over the river," the 
organ has taken a more readable standard. But 
I cannot leave out the other classes. The fresh- 
men still have more links than golf suits in 
spite of the fact that Henry Clews may be 
afflicted with only the eccentricities of genius. 
The less one says about the sophomores, of 
course the better one describes them. The 
juniors have some musicians and little Johnnie 
Pratt for a football captain. 

"Gentlemen of the Class of '95: Oh! you 
need not look so alarmed. I am not going to 
work off any song and dance about the cold, 
cruel world. It may not be such a misfortune 
to be out of college. It is not positive proof 
that a diploma is a wolf because it comes to 
you in sheep's clothing. No one in business 
will have to pay Professor Tyler, him of the 
nest-egg pate, two dollars for an extra exami- 
nation. Of course we are not all stars. Post, 
like the man in the moon, seems to have come 
too soon to find his way to knowledge. Compton 
has sometimes been unfortunate — when he 



132 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

could not read between the lines. And there is 
Charlie Little in his own specialty of drawing 
himself into his shell like a turtle to exist solely 
to and for self. In looking over the class book, 
I see that the statistics committee made the mis- 
take of not taking the opinion of the class to 
see, whether, from present indications, Fiske's 
failure to make the commencement stage was 
due more to subjective causes than to objective 
obstacles. But we have also such men as Colby, 
who at Chicago, sacrificed the brightest athletic 
prospects of any man in the class for the sake 
of Amherst, and every man in college knows 
what reward he had for his loyalty. Wherever 
we go, whatever we are, scientific or classical, 
conditioned or unconditioned, degreed or dis- 
agreed, we are going to be Amherst men. And 
whoever sees a purple and white button marked 
with '95 shall see the emblem of a class 
spirit that will say, "Old Amherst, doubtless 
always right, but right or wrong. Old Amherst!" 



SOME HIGH TIDES 133 

On Political Philosophy 

First Inaugural 

Massachusetts Senate, 1914 

C. C. 

"Honorable Senators: — I thank you — 
with gratitude for the high honor given, with 
appreciation for the solemn obligations assumed 
— I thank you. 

"This Commonwealth is one. We are all mem- 
bers of one body. The welfare of the weakest 
and the welfare of the most powerful are insep- 
arably bound together. Industry cannot flourish 
if labor languish. Transportation cannot pros- 
per if manufactures decline. The general wel- 
fare cannot be provided for in any one act, but 
it is well to remember that the benefit of one is 
the benefit of all, and the neglect of one is the 
neglect of all. The suspension of one man's 
dividends is the suspension of another man's 
pay envelope. 

"Men do not make laws. They do but dis- 
cover them. Laws must be justified by something 
more than the will of the majority. They must 
rest on the eternal foundation of righteousness. 
That state is most fortunate in its form of gov- 
ernment which has the aptest instruments for 



134 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

the discovery of laws. The latest, most modem, 
and nearest perfect system that statesmanship 
has devised is representative government. Its 
weakness is the weakness of us imperfect human 
beings who administer it. Its strength is that 
even such administration secures to the people 
more blessings than any other system ever pro- 
duced. No nation has discarded it and retained 
liberty. Representative government must be 
preserved. 

"Courts are established, not to determine the 
popularity of a cause, but to adjudicate and 
enforce rights. No litigant should be required 
to submit his case to the hazard and expense of 
a political campaign. No judge should be re- 
quired to seek or receive political rewards. The 
courts of Massachusetts are known and honored 
wherever men love justice. Let their glory suf- 
fer no diminution at our hands. The electorate 
and judiciary cannot combine. A hearing means 
a hearing. When the trial of causes goes out- 
side the court-room, Anglo-Saxon constitutional 
government ends. 

"The people cannot look to legislation gen- 
erally for success. Industry, thrift, character, 
are not conferred by act or resolve. Govern- 



SOME HIGH TIDES 135 

ment cannot relieve from toil. It can provide no 
substitute for the rewards of service. It can, 
of course, care for the defective and recognize 
distinguished merit. The normal must care for 
themselves. Self-government means self-support. 

"Man is born into the universe with a person- 
ality that is his own. He has a right that is 
founded upon the constitution of the universe 
to have property that is his own. Ultimately, 
property rights and personal rights are the same 
thing. The one cannot be preserved if the other 
be violated. Each man is entitled to his rights 
and the rewards of his service be they never so 
large or never so small. 

"History reveals no civilized people among 
whom there were not a highly educated class, 
and large aggregations of wealth, represented 
usually by the clergy and the nobility. Inspira- 
tion has always come from above. Diffusion 
of learning has come down from the university 
to the common school — the kindergarten is 
last. No one would now expect to aid the com- 
mon school by abolishing higher education. 

"It may be that the diffusion of wealth works 
in an analogous way. As the little red school- 
house is builded in the college, it may be that 



136 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

the fostering and protection of large aggrega- 
tions of wealth are the only foundation on 
which to build the prosperity of the whole peo- 
ple. Large profits mean large pay rolls. But 
profits must be the result of service performed. 
In no land are there so many and such large 
aggregations of wealth as here; in no land do 
they perform larger service; in no land will the 
work of a day bring so large a reward in mate- 
rial and spiritual welfare. 

"Have faith in Massachusetts. In some unim- 
portant detail some other States may surpass 
her, but in the general results, there is no place 
on earth where the people secure, in a larger 
measure, the blessings of organized government, 
and nowhere can those functions more properly 
be termed self-government. 

"Do the day's work. If it be to protect the 
rights of the weak, whoever objects, do it. If it 
be to help a powerful corporation better to serve 
the people, whatever the opposition, do that. 
Expect to be called a stand-patter, but don't be 
a stand-patter. Expect to be called a dema- 
gogue, but don't be a demagogue. Don't hesi- 
tate to be as revolutionary as science. Don't 
hesitate to be as reactionary as the multiplica- 



SOME HIGH TIDES 137 

tion table. Don't expect to build up the weak by 
pulling down the strong. Don't hurry to legis- 
late. Give administration a chance to catch up 
with legislation. 

"We need a broader, firmer, deeper faith in 
the people — a faith that men desire to do right, 
that the Commonwealth is founded upon a right- 
eousness which will endure, a reconstructed 
faith that the final approval of the people is 
given not to demagogues, slavishly pandering to 
their selfishness, merchandising with the clamor 
of the hour, but to statesmen, ministering to 
their welfare, representing their deep, silent, 
abiding convictions. 

"Statutes must appeal to more than material 
welfare. Wages won't satisfy, be they never so 
large. Nor houses; nor lands; nor coupons, 
though they fall thick as the leaves of autumn. 
Man has a spiritual nature. Touch it, and it 
must respond as the magnet responds to the 
pole. To that, not to selfishness, let the laws of 
the Commonwealth appeal. Recognize the 
immortal worth and dignity of man. Let the 
laws of Massachusetts proclaim to her humblest 
citizen, performing the most menial task, the 
recognition of his manhood, the recognition that 



138 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

all men are peers, the humblest with the most 
exalted, the recognition that all work is glori- 
fied. Such is the path to equality before the 
law. Such is the foundation of liberty under the 
law. Such is the sublime revelation of man's 
relation to man — Democracy." 

Second Inaugural 
Massachusetts Senate, 1915 

C. C. 
[Shortest inaugural in history.] 

"Honorable Senators: — My sincerest 
thanks, I offer you. Conserve the firm foun- 
dations of our institutions. Do your work with 
the spirit of a soldier in the public service. 
Be loyal to the Commonwealth and to your- 
selves. And be brief; above all things, 

Be Brief." 

On Law and Order 

The Police Strike 

"r/te Commonwealth of Massachusetts 
By His Excellency Calvin Coolidge, Governor 

"A Proclamation 
"The entire State Guard of Massachusetts has 



SOME HIGH TIDES 139 

been called out. Under the Constitution the 
Governor is the Commander-in-Chief thereof by 
an authority of which he could not if he chose 
divest himself. That command I must and will 
exercise. Under the law I hereby call on all 
the police of Boston who have loyally and in 
a never-to-be-forgotten way remained on duty 
to aid me in the performance of my duty of 
the restoration and maintenance of order in the 
city of Boston, and each of such officers is 
required to act in obedience to such orders as 
I may hereafter issue or cause to be issued. 

"I call on every citizen to aid me in the 
maintenance of law and order. 

"Given at the Executive Chamber, in Boston, 
this eleventh day of September, in the year of 
our Lord one thousand nine hundred and nine- 
teen, and of the Independence of the United 
States of America the one hundred and forty- 
fourth. 

Calvin Coolidge. 

"By His Excellency the Governor, 

Albert P. Langtry 
Secretary of the Commonwealth 

God save the Commonwealth of Massachusetts." 



140 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

"An Order 

Boston, September 11, 1919 

"To Edwin U. Curtis, 

As you are Police Commissioner of the City 
of Boston, 

Executive Order No. 1 
"You are hereby directed, for the purpose of 
assisting me in the performance of my duty, 
pursuant to the proclamation issued by me this 
day, to proceed in the performance of your 
duties as Police Commissioner of the City of 
Boston under my command and in obedience 
to such orders as I shall issue from time to time, 
and obey only such orders as I may so issue 
or transmit. 

Calvin Coolidge 
Governor of Massachusetts^'^ 



SOME HIGH TIDES 141 

(The only literature, of this sort, 
in political history.) 

(Copy) 

Western Union Telegram 

September 13, 1919. 

Mr. Samuel Gompers, President, 
American Federation of Labor, 
New York City, N. Y. 

Under the law the suggestions contained in 
your telegram are not within the authority of 
the Governor of Massachusetts but only of the 
Commissioner of Police of the city of Boston. 
With the maintenance of discipline in his de- 
partment I have no authority to interfere. He 
has decided that the men here abandoned their 
sworn duty and has accordingly declared their 
places vacant. I shall support the Commissioner 
in the execution of law and maintenance of 
order. 

Calvin Coolidge, Governor. 



142 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

Western Union Telegram 
(Copy) 

Sunday, September 14, 1919. 

Mr. Samuel Gompers, President, 
American Federation of Labor, 
New York City, N. Y. 

Replying to your telegram. I have already 
refused to remove the Police Commissioner of 
Boston. I did not appoint him. He can assume 
no position which the Courts would uphold 
except what the people have by the authority 
of their law vested in him. He speaks only with 
their voice. The right of the police of Boston 
to affiliate has always been questioned, never 
granted, is now prohibited. The suggestion of 
President Wilson to Washington does not apply 
to Boston. There the police have remained on 
duty. Here the Policemen's Union left their 
duty, an action which President Wilson charac- 
terized as a crime against civilization. Your 
assertion that the Commissioner was wrong can- 
not justify the wrong of leaving the city un- 
guarded. That furnished the opportunity, the 
criminal element furnished the action. There 



SOME HIGH TIDES 143 

is no right to strike against the public safety 
by anybody, anywhere, any time. You ask that 
the public safety again be placed in the hands 
of these same policemen while they continue 
in disobedience to the laws of Massachusetts 
and in their refusal to obey the orders of the 
Police Department. Nineteen men have been 
tried and removed. Others having abandoned 
their duty their places have under the law been 
declared vacant in the opinion of the Attorney 
General. I can suggest no authority outside 
the Courts to take further action. I wish to 
join and assist in taking a broad view of every 
situation. A grave responsibility rests on all 
of us. You can depend on me to support you 
in every legal action and sound policy. I am 
equally determined to defend the sovereignty 
of Massachusetts and to maintain the authority 
and jurisdiction over her public officers where 
it has been placed by the Constitution and Laws 
of her people. 

Calvin Coolidge, Governor." 



144 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

"r^e Commonwealth of Massachusetts 
By His Excellency Calvin Coolidge, Governor 

A Proclamation 

"There appears to be a misapprehension as 
to the position of the police of Boston. In the 
deliberate intention to intimidate and coerce 
the Government of this Commonwealth a large 
body of policemen, urging all others to join 
them, deserted their posts of duty, letting in the 
enemy. This act of theirs was voluntary, against 
the advice of their well wishers, long discussed 
and premeditated, and with the purpose of ob- 
structing the power of the Government to protect 
its citizens or even to maintain its own existence. 
Its success meant anarchy. By this act through 
the operation of the law they dispossessed them- 
selves. They went out of office. They stand as 
though they had never been appointed. 

"Other police remained on duty. They are 
the real heroes of this crisis. The State Guard 
responded most efficiently. Thousands have vol- 
unteered for the Guard and the Militia. Money 
has been contributed from every walk of life by 
the hundreds of thousands for the encourage- 
ment and relief of these loyal men. These acts 



SOME HIGH TIDES 145 

have been spontaneous, significant, and decisive. 
I propose to support all those who are support- 
ing their own Government with every power 
which the people have entrusted to me. 

"There is an obligation, inescapable, no less 
solemn, to resist all those who do not support 
the Government. The authority of the Common- 
wealth cannot be intimidated or coerced. It 
cannot be compromised. To place the mainte- 
nance of the public security in the hands of a 
body of men who have attempted to destroy it 
would be to flout the sovereignty of the laws the 
people have made. It is my duty to resist any 
such proposal. Those who would counsel it 
join hands with those whose acts have threatened 
to destroy the Government. There is no middle 
ground. Every attempt to prevent the formation 
of a new police force is a blow at the Govern- 
ment. That way treason lies. No man has a 
right to place his own ease or convenience or the 
opportunity of making money above his duty to 
the State. 

"This is the cause of all the people. I call on 
every citizen to stand by me in executing the oath 
of my office by supporting the authority of the 
Government and resisting all assaults upon it. 



146 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

"Given at the Executive Chamber, in Boston, 
this twenty-fourth day of September, in the year 
of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and 
nineteen, and of the Independence of the United 
States of America the one hundred and forty- 
fourth. 

Calvin Coolii>ge. 

By His Excellency the Governor: 
Herbert H. Boynton, 

Deputy, Acting Secretary 
of the Commonwealth. 

God save the Commonwealth of Massachusetts." 



ON HUMANITY 

[Copy] 

The White House 
Washington 

My dear Mr. Lucey: 

Not often do I see you or write you but I 
want you to know that if it were not for you I 
should not be here and I want to tell you how 



SOME HIGH TIDES 147 

much I love you. Do not work too much now 
and try to enjoy yourself in your well-earned 
hours of age. 

Yours sincerely, 

Calvin Coolidge. 
August 6, 1923. 

[Mr. James Lucey is a cobbler at North- 
ampton.] 



CHAPTER XI 

The Lesson 

**A youth, who bore, 'mid snow and ice, 
A banner, with the strange device, 
'Excelsior'." 

It is not the first hope of His First Biography 
simply to amuse nor even simply to interest. An 
hour of laughter, only, is an hour lost except as 
it implies necessary relaxation and recuperation 
for serious progress. His First Biography is a 
lesson, a hope to stimulate. 

The first ambition of all the earth is happi- 
ness, its best ambition and its easiest ambition 
when founded, not on the hope of getting but on 
the power of giving. A motor sweeps up Beacon 
Street with the aristocratic purr of the Pierce, 
passing some one struggling towards the city 
on his feet. He, in his turn, is indifferent to the 
car, to wealth and to its display, to money and to 
what it will buy. His hopes do not lead him 
that way. His aspirations are not fixed on ken- 
nels and racing stables, deer parks and houses 

148 



The Capfifone 

12 PRESIDENT. 102;? 



11 VICE-PRESIDENT, ]})^21-2;? 



10 GOVERNOR, 1919-20 



LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR. 1916-18 



PRESIDENT OF STATE SENATE. 1914-1.5 



STATE SEN.\TOR. 191-2-15 



MAYOR, 1910-11 



STATE REPRESENTATIVE, 1907-8 



CHAIRMAN — CITY COMMITTEE, 1904 



CLKRK OF COURTS. 190.S 



CITY SnUCITOlL 19()l»-l 



COUNCILMAN. 1S99 



HIS POLITICAL LADDER 



THE LESSON 149 

and lands. He is not only indifferent, he is con- 
tent, for he knows that happiness can not be 
bought in that way. More than this, he is happy 
and almost proud, not for what he has not, 
material possessions, but for what he can do, for 
he can write a great poem, paint a great picture 
or control a great audience. Likewise, Calvin 
Coolidge has found happiness, not in what he 
has had but in the day's work, in what he has 
done, in the development of the science of gov- 
ernment for the advancement of the cause of 
civilization. 

The story of Calvin Coolidge is an amazing 
story, none more so. A red-haired, freckled boy 
on a plain farm, who was not a leader even 
among the boys of a small Vermont village, has 
become President of the United States. He 
always kept on going, from the farm, on the 
farm, up and on and always. He has become a 
second "rail-splitter." Like Niagara, his is a 
story which grows on one, and, as it is studied, 
it overwhelms. And yet, while Roosevelt was a 
torrent, Coolidge is a steady stream. His is a 
story for every father and mother and child, a 
story of responsibilities for the first, and of 
opportunity for the last. 



150 CALVIN COOLIDGE 

The story of Calvin Coolidge is a lesson for 
every American and for those across the seas, of 
hope and realization; that America is a country 
of law, order and opportunity; that success and 
happiness come to one, not because of what is 
around him, family, fashion and fortune, but 
because of what is in him, not for what he has, 
but for what he is; and that there is no end to 
the path upwards when uncommon sense, 
fidelity, preparation and Providence walk hand 
in hand. 

His First Biography is a short lesson. It is 
a strong lesson. It is a stimulating lesson. It 
symbolizes the force of those great words of the 
Scriptures: 

"Thou hast been faithful over a feiv 
things. 
I will make thee ruler over many.'* 



The End. 



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